


Ars Arboreous

by mahoni



Series: Ars Arboreous [1]
Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: 10000-30000 words, Action/Adventure, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Team
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-05-29
Updated: 2006-05-29
Packaged: 2017-10-03 05:04:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 27,103
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14495
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mahoni/pseuds/mahoni
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sheppard is captured off-world by something the Ancients left behind.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ars Arboreous

*

...bonus dormitat Homerus (loosely, 'even Homer screws up')   
\-- from _Ars Poetica_, Horace

*

John came out of the Stargate onto a narrow stone platform. It extended just far enough out from the gate that, presumably, anyone standing just off the edge of it wouldn't get incinerated when the gate was activated.

Ronon stepped out beside him and walked out to the center of the platform, gazing around.

"I can see what you liked about the place," John said.

Teyla and Rodney appeared behind them, and as the gate switched off Rodney groaned. "Oh, wonderful. Exactly how are we supposed to get through that?"

'That' was a sea of grass, taller than any of them, crowding around the gate. Except for the area taken up by the stone platform, the gate was completely enveloped by it, only the very top of it arching above the red spires and purple seed heads. The pale stalks packed tightly together, barely moving in still, warm air that was already becoming oppressive. John thought he saw the DHD just off to the right at the end of the platform, swallowed up by the grass.

It would be a good place to get lost if you were on the run from the Wraith, but it was going to be a pain in the ass to walk through.

"McKay," John said. "Run a scan for life signs."

"I thought Ronon said the place was unpopulated," Rodney muttered, but he already had the scanner out.

"Yeah, well, it's been a few years since he was here."

"And some of those fleeing the Wraith culling may have found this place and settled here since then," Teyla added.

But Rodney shook his head. "I've got nothing as far as life signs. Scanning for energy signatures now --" He paused, adjusting the scanner controls. "Okay, no, that can't be right." He looked up and stared out over the grass; John followed his gaze to a tree line close by, straight out from the gate.

Rodney turned on Ronon, pointing in the direction of the trees. "Is the Ancient outpost in that direction?"

Ronon nodded.

"I thought you said it was small? Only a fraction of the size of Atlantis?"

"That's right."

"Well, are you sure?" Rodney demanded. "I mean, you were being chased by a Wraith. I've seen how fast you run, maybe you just glanced at it as you zipped by, and saw a small portion of something possibly bigger?"

"I camped near it the night after I killed the Wraith," Ronon said flatly. John knew Ronon still wasn't entirely used to McKay's tendency to question everybody to death, but at least he refrained from taking Rodney's head off. In both the literal and the figurative sense. "It's as big as I say."

"Rodney?" John prompted, imbuing the word with as many levels of 'get on with it, please' as he could manage.

Rodney went back to the scanner, peering closely at it as if the readings would change from across a shorter distance. "It's just that this doesn't make sense. I'm reading enough energy to power a whole city coming from that forest. And by city, I don't mean Atlantis, I mean, for example, New York."

Rodney held the scanner out for John.

"...wow." That was a really big energy signature. John handed the scanner back and looked a question at Rodney, who shrugged.

"I have no idea. Could be any number of things. A naturally occurring power source. A civilization that can shield their life signs but not their energy output. If you want to swing around to the really ugly end of the spectrum, it could be several dozen or so Wraith hive ships with the all the crew in hibernation."

"I vote for option number one," John said, adjusting the strap of his P90 to settle it more comfortably in his hands. "But since nobody's counting my vote, we'd better dial Atlantis and let them know, just in case. Who wants to try to get to the DHD over there?"

*

"Once," Rodney panted. "Just once, it would be nice if Elizabeth said 'gee, you guys have been sent into so many potentially life-threatening situations lately, why don't you come on back and we'll let somebody else put their ass on the line today.'"

He paused and leaned against a tree to catch his breath. Coming through the dense, razor-sharp grass had been bad enough; he'd nearly twisted his ankle half a dozen times, the skin of his face and hands had been flayed off, and, god, the _heat_. It was cooler under the forest canopy, but only a few feet in the ground began to slope upward. Giant trees of a size that would shame Sequoias marched up the incline; thick, heavy-looking vines, some with huge, pale pods hanging off of them, threaded around and through the trunks and branches; enormous boulders clustered in places all over the hillside like herds of petrified elephants.

This planet, Rodney thought, does everything big.

"Oh, come on, Rodney," Sheppard said from up ahead. "This could be the mother lode. The answer to all of our power needs. You want to let somebody else be the one to find it?"

Sheppard didn't even have the decency to be winded. He also didn't stop. Rodney shoved off his tree and trudged after them.

"Since it's more likely to be something that explodes, causes skin-rotting diseases, or eats people, they'd be welcome to it." But, he didn't say, if it is the mother lode -- an Ancient city with, say, a handful of fully powered ZPMs lying around radiating powerful energy signatures....

Well, honestly, why did they think he kept coming on these insane missions? The potential for history-making discoveries (the good kind, not the one-more-alien-race-that-wants-to-kill-us kind) was too good to pass up. Plus, they needed him around for when hand-to-hand combat wasn't an option and saving the day actually required brains.

And he would never admit it to anyone, but there was also the fact that sometimes, on good days, with this particular group of people, the missions could be _maybe_ just a little fun.

Not on days when hills were involved, though.

Watching his feet and willing them to keep moving, he didn't see the others stop. He collided with Teyla, who sidestepped and caught his arm to steady him.

"What are we stopping for?" he asked.

Ronon pointed to the top of the hill, at a tall ridge of vine-strewn rock. "We're here."

"What, that?"

He took several steps forward, and suddenly soft angles and planes that didn't quite match the surrounding rock resolved themselves beneath the foliage. As they drew closer, he saw that Ronon hadn't understated the size of the structure after all. It looked to be only two or three stories tall; towering rocks bookended it, and from one end to the other it couldn't have been wider than maybe twice the width of the gate room in Atlantis. On the other hand, there was no telling how far back it went.

Sheppard brushed aside a curtain of creepers, exposing part of a dirt-crusted but gracefully arched window. "I guess it looks pretty much Ancient."

"Look at this," Teyla was at the left end of the building. She pointed to where the design had been modified to allow the structure to mold almost seamlessly against the rock. "It seems to have been constructed to blend in with its surroundings."

"Or maybe to allow the surroundings to complement it," Rodney said. "Like, the Ancient version of Organic Architecture." He tried to imagine it without the grime and encroaching plant life. "It must have been striking. But I've never seen an Ancient structure that deviated so much from the typical angular, pointy-spire look. Maybe it wasn't built by them after all."

"Well," Sheppard said, stepping back and sweeping his gaze over the structure. "We might know more once we get inside. Let's see if we can find a door. I'd hate to bust out one of those pretty windows."

Ronon moved directly to a space about dead center on the ground level. "The door is here. Last time I tried opening it without having to cut away the vines, but it's locked up pretty tight. I couldn't have got it open without blasting it."

Sheppard nodded. "Well, I'd like to avoid shooting it open, but since we're not worried about anybody knowing we went in we can be a little less careful."

As Ronon pulled out one of his scarier knives and began to slice through the vines, Rodney got out his scanner and moved closer, staying just far enough from him to avoid being accidentally gutted. The energy readings were close by. If the structure went much farther back than they could see from here...but it would have to go much, much farther back, given the area the readings covered.

He heard a sound behind him; it was soft enough that, as engrossed in the scanner readings as he was, it didn't occur to him to be alarmed. He half-turned and glanced up absentmindedly.

A vine hung down from one of the trees above him. It hadn't been there just a moment ago; if it had he would have walked right into it. It unfurled slowly, almost deliberately. Out of the corner of his eye he saw several more dropping with little more than a whispering rustle, hanging down around him and Ronon.

"Huh," he said, because they began to bend at the ends in a very un-plant-like way, and seemed to be heading toward Ronon, who continued massacring the thick creepers obliviously.

Rodney forgot to shout a warning. He just lurched sideways and shoved Ronon out of the way.

The next thing he knew, he couldn't breathe and his arms were trapped against his body. His feet left the ground and he shot into the air.

He flailed with his legs and twisted against the constricting vines; they were pulling him steadily up, as if to tuck him away in the leafy canopy for -- he had no idea what for, but he objected to whatever it was just on principle.

The branches and the long vines that supported him suddenly exploded above him, in time with the sharp rattle of a P90 and the muted thunder of Ronon's gun coming from below. He clamped his eyes shut against the debris, and then the world turned over and around as he fell -- but something bashed him in the head and he never hit the ground.

*

John and Ronon dove forward to break Rodney's fall, Ronon catching most of Rodney's weight, and both of them were borne to the ground.

As Ronon hefted Rodney onto his back and checked for a pulse, John rolled up to his knees. He looked around quickly, sighting down the P90, and listened. The vines in the trees were motionless now, showing no sign of having tried to kidnap one of his team only minutes ago. Nothing at all moved in the forest, in fact, and the only sound was the wind in the trees.

"Teyla? You see anything?"

"No. But I think perhaps we should leave."

"Yeah, I agree." He stood slowly, keeping his eyes on the forest around them. "Ronon, how's Rodney?"

"Alive, but out. I'll have to carry him."

Ronon heaved Rodney over his shoulder. John waited until he pushed to his feet, then said, "Okay. Let's go."

And that's when all hell really broke loose.

*

Shoving through the thick grass, John decided he would have felt a lot better about their chances of getting off this planet alive if the damned _trees_ hadn't taken their guns.

He could see the gate ahead, just the top above the grass. He heard Teyla shout that she was at the DHD. Ronon plowed ahead with Rodney slung over his shoulder, and John stayed close on his heels, taking advantage of the path Ronon broke through the prairie. Even so, the blades stung his hands and face as he went.

He had brief, unpleasant visions of the grass coming alive and wrapping them up like flies in a web, or roots bursting out of the earth to snare their ankles. Nothing like that happened, though; the only danger was coming up fast from the rear on multiple sets of four legs.

"Go, go, go!" Sheppard shouted at Teyla, before he could even see her. He could hear the creatures crashing through the prairie behind them, too close. _Just a few more feet._

They stumbled out onto the platform in front of the Stargate, picking their pace up to run the last short stretch. Then something big hit John in the middle of the back and he flew forward into Ronon; something else plucked at his leg as they fell through the gate.

At first there was --

*

The security detail had the gate surrounded almost immediately after receiving Teyla's communication that they were coming through with hostiles in close pursuit. This sort of thing didn't cause a moment of shocked paralysis for Elizabeth any more, but she still came out of her office at a run.

She made it to the balcony as Teyla came through the gate, dashing across the platform to get out of the line of fire before turning to watch for the rest of her team. A moment later, a tangle of bodies fell through. Ronon crashed to the platform, throwing his arm out and twisting, trying not to land on nor lose his hold on the man he carried. Elizabeth had only enough time to see that it was Rodney, because the other body that had come through with them scrambled to its feet -- its four feet -- and opened its mouth, as if to roar. Instead, something long and slender shot out, caught Ronon around the throat, and jerked him forward.

Two more of the beasts shot into the gate room as security opened fire on the first. The command to raise the gate shield caught in Elizabeth's throat. Sheppard hadn't come through yet; if he tried to come through and they raised the shield, he would be killed. If they deactivated the gate and he was trapped on the other side -- with more of those creatures, or god knew what else -- at least, she thought, at least he'd have a chance. She shouted over her shoulder,

"Shut down the gate!"

"Yes, ma'am," Chuck shouted back, but the gate remained on. "I can't -- something must be en route."

"Keep trying." Elizabeth clutched the balcony railing and willed that it was John on his way.

Down in the gate room, the first creature sprawled on the platform unmoving. One of the Marines went down under the weight of a second as the third tried to dodge the hail of bullets.

"Got it --" Chuck said, and the gate winked out.

For a moment all Elizabeth could see in the chaos below was what had come through gate; and all she could think was _no, no, dammit, no, _ because it wasn't John Sheppard.

*

\-- then John slid back out of the gate, and sudden pain took his breath away. He curled up, swallowing a scream and yanking at the thing that had punctured his leg. He thought tongue because it came out of the creature's mouth, but under his desperate fingers it was cylindrical, hard and dry. The sharp end had gone through his calf at an angle, come out the front of his leg, and wrapped around his knee. The creature it was attached to backed slowly away from the gate, dragging him with; every few steps it jerked its head back, yanking hard on John's leg and sending agony through him.

Hands caught at him; tall figures surrounded him, grabbing hold of his wrists and legs. The thing in his leg suddenly whipped out, and his vision went grey. When it cleared again, he was on his stomach, his wrists being bound behind his back.

"Shit." He gritted his teeth, and forced down the urge to struggle. They were clustered around him, several holding him down while another worked on the bindings. He knew couldn't fight them off right now; he had to save it for when he actually had a chance.

Besides, he wasn't entirely sure what he was dealing with. They rolled him over, pinning his shoulders and legs to the ground, one of them pressing firmly down on his chest and making it hard to breathe. He couldn't have breathed for a moment, anyway, when he finally saw what had him.

They were basically human-shaped. They had the same number of arms and legs, unusually long and thin but all in the right places. They had one head apiece and two eyes, never mind that the eyes were glassy and dark, lacking anything that looked like an iris or a pupil. Their noses were...nose-like.

From there the aliens' appearance diverged from human, though. Their skin was, depending on the individual, shades of ash or dirt, hairless that he could see, covered in bumps ranging from nightmarish zit to welt in size; it was incredibly creepy, but he thought that as long as he didn't have to touch them, he could deal. Sheppard also considered that a lack of ears in and of itself wasn't so bad.

The empty space of pebbled skin where a mouth should be, though -- that, for some reason, made him scream a little inside his head.

And they were just...staring at him. Silently. Their mouthless faces blocked out the sky above him, and he thought, _goddammit, why didn't Ronon mention these creepy-ass bastards _before_ we came here? _

Suddenly the one pushing on his chest stood and stepped away from him. He took a deep, grateful breath; the others continued to hold him down, but straightened, moving out of his direct line of sight.

Sheppard took the opportunity for a quick look around. There were other aliens surrounding them. A group stood mostly hidden in the grass flanking the open space around the deactivated Stargate. They held what he assumed were weapons aimed at anything that might dial back through. A couple of them shifted away from each other, and one stepped between them and moved directly to where John lay.

It stopped beside him, staring down at him. John stared back, waiting. For a long moment the only sound was the rustling of the grass around them as the guarding aliens shifted in place, and it chafed his nerves. He didn't know what he was waiting for -- interrogation, torture, death; he sure wouldn't say no to them letting him go, but he figured that was probably out of the question.

"I think," he said, because he couldn't stand the silence any more. "This is where I should say that we seem to have gotten off on the wrong foot."

Nothing. No reaction. It just stood and stared. They had no ears, they had no mouths; he wouldn't bet on them being able to hear him, much less respond, but at the moment anything was better than silence. Plus, this was the Pegasus galaxy, where Wraith used mouths in their hands to eat. Maybe these things could hear him and talk, just from somewhere else.

"So, maybe we could try again. Start over fresh?" He tried to shift slightly, because they were pressing his bleeding leg hard against the stone and holy shit that hurt, but their grip on him just tightened from steely to crushing. "Ow. Right. Look, I apologize for shooting your trees and your -- your, I don't know, what the hell are they, dogs? And that thing with the stun grenade, that might have been premature. But in my defense --"

He stopped because the one standing over him had begun to change color. All of them were dressed from neck to ankles in a rough fabric of a dirty green color. It wound around their bodies, their arms and their legs like snug togas, or like the wrappings on a mummy. The bumpy, dull skin of their hands and feet and faces was left exposed; but in the case of this one currently staring him down, the skin was no longer dull. First it had paled, and now it began to flush gradually to dark, brilliant orange.

Of course John wasn't sure, but instinct told him that was probably bad.

But all it did was turn and walk away. John was hauled to his feet. They didn't bother waiting to see if he could walk, just dragged him along with them. It was a smart move on their part, since as soon as he was upright his head spun and his body flushed with pins and needles; he'd have fallen on his face if they'd tried to make him stand on his own power.

They were more than a head taller than him and really strong, and his toes barely scraped the ground as they carried him to the DHD. A pair of aliens used long knives to clear the grass away from the device. Once they were done, John was hoisted around to the business end of it, where they dropped him to his feet. He sagged sideways when his injured leg refused flat out to hold him up and his other leg decided it wasn't really sold on the idea either. He was saved from going down completely by their grip on his arms.

For a moment they stood there, the orange one staring at him wordlessly. The aliens guarding the gate kept their attention on it, expectantly, weapons still ready. Finally the orange one angled its head at John, at the DHD, and then at the gate.

"What, you want me help you dial back to where I came from?" Well, naturally. For a moment, he considered doing it. He could dial the gate and not send his IDC, and send them through to obliterate themselves against the gate shield and that would be that. Except there was a good chance they'd take him along, and he wasn't ready be zapped out of existence quite yet. "Sorry, I can't do that. I'm not really keen on the idea of letting a squad of armed aliens into my city."

The alien bobbed its head again: John; DHD; gate.

"No." John shook his head.

The backhand nearly took his head off. John wobbled his head back into a forward-facing position, unable to decide what hurt more, his face or his neck. These guys might have arms and fingers like twigs, but he was pretty sure they were made of rock.

He blinked muzzily a few times, ignoring the head-bobbing shtick while he moved his jaw experimentally. _Ow_.

He saw the next one coming and jerked his head back. This time just his nose and mouth exploded with pain and he tasted blood.

The alien was changing colors again, the orange deepening to an unhealthy-looking purplish red as it shoved John hard at the DHD.

He grunted as he fell forward against it. Turning his head to look up at the alien, he said flatly, "Sorry, answer's still no."

The last blow knocked him out cold.

*

It was late, but Elizabeth hadn't been sleeping when Carson called. He had something to tell her about the alien that had come through the gate; he sounded excited, which she hoped meant that at least alien hadn't died.

She had been sitting in a chair in the dark, looking out at the ocean, and only required a pause to squint in the brightly lit hallway before she was on her way to the infirmary. She spent a lot of nights kept company by the Atlantean sea. When things went wrong -- even when she knew she had made the right decision, that didn't mean she liked to be the one to send her people into danger -- in the darkness especially the endless sea was more comforting to her than any place or person on Earth had ever been. She sent her fears and her grief out to the sea, and wrapped herself up in its solitude. Sometimes, it helped.

"Dr. Weir."

She slowed briefly, letting Ronon catch up to her.

"Ronon," she said. "What are you doing up so late?"

He had a ring of bruises around his neck, and still wore the expression of tightly controlled fury that had hardened his face when he found out they had left Sheppard behind.

"I want to apologize again."

She shook her head. "You didn't know. You said you never encountered these aliens when you visited the planet."

"I should have known," he said. "I should have seen signs."

"Ronon --"

He stepped in front of her, gently touching her shoulder to stop her. She could see, in his face and in the way he immediately dropped his hand into a loose fist at his side, the effort he was making to not let his frustration and anger out at her.

"You have to let us go back."

She understood. Even for her the waiting was hard, but Ronon thrived on action, on striking first or on quick retribution. Sheppard kept him in line, but right now Sheppard wasn't here.

"You know as well as I do we can't, not yet. We know nothing about these aliens except that their weapons can put a hole through our gate room wall. I have Dr. Zelenka studying the weapon we confiscated, but at this point, I don't want to risk sending even a cloaked jumper to the planet. If the aliens are guarding the gate, several of them firing blindly might be enough to bring it down."

He stared at her, the stare that said _not good enough_, and she knew it referred to her reasoning as well as herself. She was a civilian, and he did not accept a civilian as his commanding officer -- again, unless Sheppard was there to tell him to.

"Ronon, we will get Colonel Sheppard back. But I will not authorize any kind of rescue mission until I believe it has a chance of succeeding."

He held her gaze for a long moment. At first she thought he would continue arguing with her, but all he did was turn and walk silently away.

She sighed, and continued to the infirmary.

*

The lights in the front section of the infirmary were turned down low. In a bed along the wall, one of the gate room security contingent slept; he'd suffered several broken ribs after being tackled by one of the wolf-like animals. Next to him lay a civilian, an archeologist who had been on the other side of the wall when the alien weapon punched through. Luckily she hadn't been in the direct line of fire, and had only suffered a handful of broken bones and some injuries from flying metal and sparking wires.

Further down, Rodney sat up in his bed hunched over a laptop. He pressed his fingertips to his forehead a couple of inches away from a white bandage that partially covered a swollen, blackened bruise as he peered at the screen.

"Rodney," Elizabeth said softly, making her way to him. "Shouldn't you be resting?"

He made a 'pfft' sound. "Probably, but thanks to my splitting headache and the non-stop chattering of Frankenstein and Igor over there, I can't."

Elizabeth glanced over to where Dr. Beckett stood near the door of one of the private rooms, talking quietly but animatedly to one of his nurses. Usually those rooms were kept available for severe trauma patients; that one was currently housing an injured alien.

"Any news about Sheppard?" Rodney asked.

"No," she said. "I'm hoping to talk to our guest and see what we can find out about its people. They may turn out to be peaceful, willing to negotiate."

"Oh, right, negotiate, kind of like they did when they set the entire forest and those animals on us. Or when that one shot up the gate room. And I've seen it -- it doesn't even have ears, or a mouth." His voice had begun to rise, but he glanced at Beckett and forced himself to speak more softly. "Exactly how to you intend to communicate with it?"

"I don't know yet," she admitted. "But I'm going to at least try."

"Do we even know if --" Rodney stopped, and though his changing expression showed there were any number of things he wanted to say, he couldn't seem to settle on one.

Elizabeth smiled softly and encouragingly, hoping she looked less worried than she felt. "It hasn't even been twelve hours yet, Rodney. He's fine. We'll get him back."

"Twelve hours," Rodney repeated. "Twelve hours is a long time when you're alone in the Land of Killer Plants with creatures from the Twilight Zone."

"It will be okay," she said gently, firmly. "John knows we're doing whatever we can to get to him, and --"

Something dark and helpless flared up in his eyes and he snapped, "Oh sure, I bet he has all kinds of confidence in our ability to mount a speedy rescue. Because the last time it only took us, you know, six months."

"Rodney," she said, but didn't really know where to go from there. Most of the time Rodney seemed to compartmentalize his failures -- real or, as in this case, perceived -- somewhere in his brain where they didn't affect his ego or any of his other higher functions. It was admittedly much easier to deal with him on that level; when something happened to bring guilt or uncertainty to the surface, Elizabeth always felt a little at a loss.

But he waved a hand to cut off anything she might have said. Shoving the computer from his lap onto the bed, he sighed deeply.

"Sorry," he muttered, motioning at his bruised forehead. "It's the -- it's just that my head is pounding, and my back hurts, and words like 'X-men' and 'Cyclops' keep turning up in Zelenka's preliminary findings on the alien's weapon, and Beckett won't let me leave yet, and I'm just.... Sorry."

Carson was gesturing to her. She hesitated, still feeling as though she should say something but knowing that anything she could say would not be what Rodney needed to hear. Instead, she just gave his arm a gentle squeeze, and followed Beckett into his office.

*

Carson handed Elizabeth into his office and into a chair. He was wound up; at first he stepped around his desk, but didn't sit down; then he came back around to the front of the desk and half sat on the edge of it in front of her. Finally he took a deep breath and said,

"Well, I don't know exactly where to start."

Elizabeth wasn't sure how to take that. They didn't really have the time to puzzle out an incredibly complex life form at the moment, but Carson's eyes were bright with excitement.

"This is --" Carson began, and then broke off, his hands coming up in a helpless gesture. "This is just incredibly fascinating. We -- well, all right, first of all, we were able to remove the bullets from the alien's arm and shoulder. We appear to have stopped the bleeding as well. I'm not entirely sure, but I believe its condition is stabilizing."

"That's excellent news," Elizabeth said, relieved.

"But that's not the exciting part," Carson continued. "As you know, I initially had no clue how to approach treating this alien. The subdermis is incredibly hard, it responded badly to even the small doses of pain relievers I attempted to give it, and I really thought I was going to do more damage than good no matter what I did.

"But the nurse I'd given the skin and blood cultures to noticed that the cells share certain significant chemical and structural characteristics with -- well, with plant cells."

Elizabeth frowned skeptically. "Plant cells?"

"Yes." Carson sat down in the chair next to her and leaned forward. "In fact, based on my description of the wounds, a friend of mine in Botany recommended we treat them with a paste generally used to treat damaged or diseased trees. I know that sounds bizarre," he said at Elizabeth's incredulous look. "But it seems to be working."

"Diseased trees?" Elizabeth managed.

"That's not all. I've done a high level genetic comparison between Pegasus galaxy human DNA, the alien's DNA, and DNA from plant material we pulled from Rodney's clothing. On a genetic level, this alien is directly related to the native plant life _and_ to the humans of this galaxy."

"Related to...?" Elizabeth was having a hard time wrapping her head around this. "Are you saying these beings are like the Wraith, except with plants instead of insects?"

"No, not exactly," Carson said. "The Wraith are the result of an accidental combination of insect and human DNA, but I don't see how that could have happened naturally here. The plant material I'm looking at contains some elements that indicate it could be compatible with animal DNA, but only in the hands of a very skilled and creative -- and probably quite mad -- geneticist."

Elizabeth's head was spinning a little. "These creatures were genetically engineered. Human DNA purposefully blended with plant DNA, specifically from this planet."

"Yes."

The purposeful, successful creation of an essentially non-human species. Elizabeth couldn't decide what astounded her more -- the level of scientific advancement that would have been required to accomplish this, or the fact that the Ancients were even willing to try.

But that had to wait. _Twelve hours is a long time_.

"That is fascinating, Dr. Beckett," she agreed. "But how does this help us communicate with the alien?"

Carson's face fell a little. "Well, I don't know that it does. I haven't gotten that far yet."

"Have you tried talking to it? Does it seem to understand us at all?"

"Unfortunately, it has either been in great pain or unconscious." Carson shook his head. "I haven't been able to gauge comprehension yet."

Elizabeth clasped her hands in front of her to keep herself from burying her face in them. "It's already been almost twelve hours, Carson. We need to try to talk to it soon."

*

John didn't honestly remember that much from earlier, but there were flashes in his mind -- images of hallways, stairwells, and especially of that room with the bright lights and the alien who did really unpleasant things to his leg. Those places, as far as he could remember, were overwhelmingly organic. Wooden walls, a lot of leafy plants everywhere, wood and even stone furnishings -- the tools the alien had used were metal, but the table they strapped him down to had felt grainy, like nearly-smooth stone.

So the room he eventually woke up in seemed out of place. He couldn't see what it looked like; there was only enough light, coming from someplace down a long hallway, to allow him to see a dim outline of the cell door. But as he crawled around the cell's perimeter, exploring with his hands, the floor and the walls felt unmistakably metal. The walls were almost uniformly flat and smooth, and rang when he rapped them with his knuckles in a way that suggested they might even be hollow in places.

Some organic material was built into the set-up -- the thick bars across the cell door twisted and curved in a way that the kinds of metal bars he was familiar with didn't, and when he touched them they felt woody. But in some places the wood had chipped or worn away, and beneath the wood was more metal. It was as if vines or roots had been grown, trained to a shape, and then hollowed out and reinforced with a stronger substance. It was different, but effective.

And also, it was cold. Probably not cold enough to make hypothermia a concern, but cold enough that he couldn't stop shivering. He still had his shoes, pants, and t-shirt, but his vest and jacket were gone. The air was cold and damp. He had found a wide, shallow indentation in the back wall tucked into a broad, angular frame. Sitting up against it gave him a direct view out of the cell but the floor and wall leeched the warmth out of him. His face ached, his neck was stiff. He could hardly bend his leg, which throbbed with every heartbeat and generally felt like it was on fire. He was hungry and tired and really, really thirsty. And, again, it was cold. And dark. And completely silent. And pretty much miserable.

"This sucks," he told the darkness outside the cell. "In case you wondered how I felt about it. Not that you did, you creepy, alien...assholes."

At least the rest of his team was safe. Rodney hadn't been in top condition at the end there, but he had the hardest head of anyone John knew. He'd be okay.

John sighed, and traced the dim outline of the cell door with his eyes, rubbing his cold, sore arms with icy hands. He felt like he'd been in the cell a long time, but sitting in the dark for extended periods tended to screw with a person's sense of time.

He knew somebody would come looking for him. It was a pretty strange feeling -- he'd always been sort of on the fence about expecting that sort of thing from other people, and he'd spent six months fairly recently convinced he had been right about never trusting anybody ever at all about anything, but especially about not abandoning him somewhere to rot when it wasn't convenient to rescue him.

He'd been wrong about that, though. After he got over the various levels of shock -- it had only been a couple of hours? They hadn't forgotten about him? That thing was a fucking figment of a bunch of blissed-out Ancients' _imaginations? _ \-- after he shaved, slept in his own bed a few nights, and sat down to a few meals with the people he'd thought had given up on him....

He understood that for other people, no matter what their relationship to you, sometimes it was right for them to cut their losses. That's why he wouldn't have fought whatever the Air Force had decided to do with him after Afghanistan. He did what he had to do, and they did what they had to do. That's just the way it was.

The last place he expected to find people who did things the way he did was in some back corner of a distant galaxy where survival was hard enough without haring off to rescue every stray expedition member who got himself in trouble. But he understood now that to these people, none of them were -- _he_ wasn't -- just an expedition member. It was strange; unexpected; kind of made him feel self-conscious; but really...nice.

This wasn't like the last time, though. This time there were enormous dogs with prehensile tongues, and armed aliens whose security system consisted of an entire fucking forest that could disarm and probably kill you. The people back in Atlantis wouldn't even know what they were up against -- his team had encountered the animals and the forest, but the aliens hadn't shown up until after the others had gone through the gate.

If the _Daedelus_ wasn't weeks away, he wouldn't be worried. But he didn't like the odds without Caldwell's ship in the mix, and he wished that for once his people would just leave this alone.

He knew they wouldn't, though, because he knew he wouldn't, so he had to get to them before they came after him. Somehow. He tucked his good leg up and hunched over with his forehead on his knee, and tried to figure out how to get himself out of there.

*

John hadn't come up with any workable ideas for escape by the time the aliens came, mostly because at some point he'd fallen asleep. The shuffling footsteps and the growing light roused him. It took some effort to wake up completely; he felt heavy all over, his head buzzed and his eyes felt full of sand. He got himself sitting upright, but spent the time it took the aliens to open the cell and enter fighting down nausea as the room swam.

"Hi," he said, and then swallowed a couple of times to wet his dry mouth and throat. "Letting me go?"

One of the aliens carried an incredibly bright lamp on a stick; the light half-blinded him at first and made his eyes water. He noticed once he could see again that it also carried a weapon, although the only weapon aimed at him was in the hands of another, lampless alien. The weapons reminded him a little of Ronon's favorite gun, because the trigger ends were topped with big, red glowy spheres. They were longer, though, and more narrow than Ronon's gun. He hadn't seen them in action yet, and he hoped not to.

"Barring that, I wouldn't say no to something to eat, maybe some water," he said, and then kind of wished he hadn't mentioned food. The thought made his stomach both grumble emptily as well as contemplate turning inside out.

In the answering silence he let his eyes wander around the cell, keeping a peripheral eye on the aliens. It never hurt, as far as he was concerned, to demonstrate lack of fear to hostiles, but mostly he just wanted to look around. Now that everything was lit up, he was having all kinds of interesting revelations.

He snapped his attention fully back to his visitors as a third alien approached him. This one had no lamp and no weapon, just an air of determination. John scooted sideways when it crouched down near him and reached for his leg.

"Don't touch that," he said. "Especially if you're the same guy who was fucking around with it before. Not unless you have a really good malpractice lawyer -- hey --"

The muzzle of a gun caught him in the chest, pushing him down to his elbows. He refused to drop all the way back, and watched as the unarmed alien took hold of the ankle of his bad leg.

In the close quarters, he couldn't help but notice how the aliens smelled. It wasn't a bad smell, but it was sharp, and weirdly familiar. It reminded him a little of the scent inside a sauna, of the heated wood and stone. It also unfortunately got stronger the longer they stayed.

The alien examining his leg was surprisingly gentle. John's shredded pant leg was stiff and tacky with blood and stuck to his skin, but the alien plucked at it slowly until it came away, exposing the wounds.

John had felt the lumpy dressing in the dark -- some kind of gauzy stuff he'd been unable to pick off, trapping a squishy goo over the entrance and exit wounds. Now he saw that the stuff was a revolting yellow-brown, streaked at the edges with the bright red of his blood. His skin around the dressing was pink and a little blistered; no wonder it itched and burned like crazy.

He hissed and flinched as the alien prodded the dressing and the reddened skin and he was surprised to see the alien flinch too. It didn't just flinch; its gray skin sprung out all over in enormous bluish, bruise-like blotches as it jerked its hand away from his leg and drew back, staring at him.

"Why, yes," he said. "That did hurt. In fact, I'd really like it if you would just leave my leg the hell alone now."

He was pretty sure they couldn't understand him. He'd been wondering if the aliens were telepaths, but at any rate they didn't respond to the sounds he made or make any sound of their own. So he wasn't expecting it when the alien did release him. It stood up; something seemed to pass between it and the alien holding the gun on John. Finally, it took the gun and stepped back.

"Ah," John said as the next alien kneeled beside him and immediately began to flush bright orange. "I remember you. You're the guy with the really short fuse."

This time the alien had nothing to bob its head at, and it only stared silently for a while. John figured something unpleasant was about to happen when it began turning red. He tried to block the hand that shot toward him, but the alien batted his hands away and grabbed John by the throat, shoving him back against the wall.

 

The thing about this guy, John thought as he fought for breath and stars sparkled at the edge of his vision, is that he hasn't figured out that you can't interrogate somebody if you keep knocking him unconscious.

Before he passed out completely, though, the alien let go. John coughed, rubbing his throat, as the alien who still looked like a blue-spotted giraffe pulled the red alien away and to its feet. They stood for a moment, locked in a wordless stare-down, and then --

And then, that was it. No more silent non-questioning, no more smacking John around; they simply turned to go.

John watched them a little incredulously. _Okay. That was quick and...pointless_.

While the lamp-carrying alien did something to lock the door behind them, Blue paused to watch John through the bars expressionlessly.

"Right, thanks for...you know," he said, and gave the guy a little mock wave. After a moment, the alien mimicked the wave, and then turned to follow the others away down the hall.

The light faded and John was left in darkness again. All in all, though, he decided things were looking up. Sure, he was still injured and a prisoner, and, ever since mentioning food to the aliens, amazingly hungry. He seemed to have made a possible ally, though. And more importantly, he now had an escape plan.

The outline of his cell door, he realized now, matched the outline of the floor-to-ceiling window he'd seen at the front of the Ancient structure they'd come to explore. He'd be willing to bet a steak dinner -- and oh god that sounded good -- that the aliens had built their own buildings around the abandoned Ancient outpost, flush up against it, on the opposite side of the building from where his team had been. They were using at least portions of the outpost that lined the outside wall; in this case, they'd turned a room about the size of a big storage closet into a cell, removing the window glass to create the cell entrance.

The interior of the room featured the same general design as similar rooms back in Atlantis; regardless of the unusual external architecture, the Ancients had definitely built this place. Nothing seemed to be powered up, but he was familiar on an admittedly basic level with how some Ancient systems could be manipulated even when they were dead. For example, he'd had the chance to jimmy open a couple of powered-down doors in the past, experience that would come in handy now given that the section of indented wall John had been sitting against all this time was a door.

*

The alien sat stiffly on the infirmary bed watching Elizabeth. It had been surprisingly easy to handle, as far as prisoners went.

Waking in a strange place had naturally caused it some agitation. In fact, upon regaining consciousness the first thing it did was tumble out of the bed. It had sprung unsteadily to its feet, and, catching sight of the four Marines surrounding it at a safe distance with weapons ready, had paled to such a shockingly translucent white that Elizabeth and Carson had both thought it was about to have the plant-person version of a coronary.

When no one moved to harm it, though, its color had darkened slowly back to its normal dirty gray. Carson had been able to coax it to sit on the bed, though it refused to lie back down. Every now and then, when someone made a sudden move, it would leap to its feet and spring out all over with white blotches until it realized nothing bad was going to happen, and then it would resume its seat. For its own part, it had not attacked anyone or done anything threatening at all, nor even tried to escape.

Elizabeth and Carson had been sitting with it for hours, trying to communicate with it, and having no luck. They had tried pointing at themselves and at objects and naming them, and eventually the alien had begun pointing, too -- at itself, at them, at the same objects -- but had made no sound.

Carson had said the alien had the organs necessary to both speak and hear, but he also said that the alien had other apparent vestigial organs left over from the genetic engineering or evolutionary process that were no longer in use. Elizabeth had begun to think that for these aliens audible communication was obsolete, and had started tossing around possible alternatives. They knew the Wraith had telepathic abilities; maybe these aliens did too.

Now...she wasn't sure. She stopped the recording she'd been making of their session, and skipped back several minutes. Pressing play, she listened to her voice, and then heard herself pause to give the alien a chance to answer. In the silence that followed, Elizabeth saw the alien jump slightly.

Carson slipped back into his seat beside her. "Well, Rodney appears to have made his escape. The on-duty nurse hadn't even noticed he was gone until I asked her where he was."

Elizabeth smiled. "He's getting worse than Colonel Sheppard."

"Aye," Carson huffed. "They're a bad influence on each other. But he's probably fine. I'll want to have a look at him before he goes running off on any missions, though."

Elizabeth nodded. "How are the others?"

"Doing well. I'm going to release Sergeant Mabry this afternoon. Dr. Ackberzie will be here a little longer, but she's improving too." He gestured to the alien. "Anything from our friend yet?"

"Actually, I think so."

Carson blinked, surprised. "Really?"

She set the recording back again, and then restarted it. As it played she pointed to the monitor they had set up to display a visual representation of the sounds being created by their seeming one-way conversation. "This is my voice, pitched at this frequency. Now look at the frequency being picked up during the silence."

Carson studied the read-out. "I see it. But that sound registers as high as 125,000 Hertz."

Elizabeth nodded. "If we had any bats in here, they'd be going crazy."

They both looked at the alien. It was leaning forward, trying to examine from a distance the machine playing back the recording.

"Can we turn the sounds it's making into something we can hear?" Carson asked.

Elizabeth examined the machine. The tech had shown her how to do practically everything with it. Normally when it came to electronics she tuned out everything but what she needed to know at a given moment, but she'd actually been paying attention this time.

"Oh yes," she said, punching in a series of commands. "Here we go. Reset the playback parameters...rewind...and --" She pushed play.

They heard it immediately, and it was beautiful. Layers of humming and guttural clicks picked out melodies and scales in bite-sized pieces. It was absolutely amazing, and utterly incomprehensible. She couldn't even begin to guess if she was hearing phrases or individual words, much less hope to decipher it quickly. Turning helplessly to Carson, she saw a mix of awe and uncertainty in his eyes.

"What do you think?" he asked quietly.

She shook her head, sagging back into her chair. "Given enough time, I think I'd be able to identify speech patterns, and eventually translate it. But it would take months, at the least. Probably longer." She switched off the recording, frustrated.

"All right," she sighed. "This isn't working. Let's move on, and determine if the alien has a written language. The Wraith language turned out to be a recognizable derivative of Ancient. Maybe we'll get lucky and find something similar here."

*

"You are completely missing the point!" Rodney shouted. He had to close his eyes to yell. Having his eyes open hurt his head; yelling hurt his head; both together hurt his head and made him feel like he was going to throw up.

Radek shouted right back at him. "No! Point is to analyze alien weapon and determine ways to protect jumpers from it! If you were not concussed you would see that is what I am doing!"

"You don't need to take the stupid thing apart to figure out how to protect the --"

"We need to know how it works --"

"It SHOOTS BIG HOLES IN THINGS using CONCUSSIVE FORCE, how much more do we --"

"But that only tells us 'boost shield power,' and we do not know how many more or bigger of these weapons --"

"So boost the shield power A LOT --"

"If you would shut up and listen to me, Rodney --"

Someone cleared his throat from the doorway. Rodney swung around dizzily and he and Radek snapped at the same time:

"_WHAT? _"

Ronon was completely unmoved by their outburst. Teyla, stepping through the door from behind him, only raised an eyebrow and tried not to smile. They were both getting far too blasé about Rodney's idiosyncrasies. He didn't know if he liked that; he was used to being able to either frighten or annoy anyone all the time. But on the other hand it was nice to end conversations without the occasional vague (though always fleeting and completely ignorable) feeling that he should apologize for something.

"We need to talk to you," Ronon said.

"About what?" Rodney said, exasperated. "And can't it wait? I'm in the middle of something kind of important here."

"It can't wait." Ronon didn't answer the other question, instead flicking his gaze meaningfully at Radek.

Radek rolled his eyes. "Yes, yes, take him away, and please keep him. He should be in the infirmary instead of here mucking around in my work anyway."

"You're not getting rid of me that easily!" Rodney raised his voice as Radek disappeared into the back room of the lab. "You know I'm right and --" He started to take a step in Radek's direction but Ronon stopped him.

"McKay! We need to talk," he said. "Now."

Rodney shot a scowl at the back room, and then muttered, "All right, fine, but you'll have to come in. If I leave the lab he might try to lock me out." He moved to a stool and collapsed onto it, wincing as his back twinged. Between the headache, his wrenched back and the fact that pretty much his entire body felt like he'd just gone a round in the practice room with Sheppard, he really wished he could take something stronger than a handful of ibuprofen without getting loopy.

Teyla's brow furrowed as she entered. "You do not look well, Dr. McKay."

"Oh yes, thank you," he said. "Is that what you desperately needed to talk to me about? Because I snuck out of the infirmary to get away from that kind of thing."

"We need to go back to the planet," Ronon said.

Rodney resisted the urge to throw something. "And what do you think I'm doing here? I'm trying to help Zelenka figure out a way to protect the jumpers from the alien weapons so we can do exactly that. Or I was, until you interrupted me."

"Ronon believes we should not wait for a jumper to be modified," Teyla clarified. She spoke very carefully; if Rodney hadn't been distracted by the fact that suddenly he was seeing two of both of them, he might have noticed and figured out where this was going.

"It's time to go back," Ronon said. "We've waited long enough."

Rodney looked back and forth between them. "What do you mean, just...go? Now? Without any modifications to the jumper at all? Dr. Weir authorized that?"

Ronon just looked at him. Teyla shifted ever so slightly, and Rodney got the feeling some kind of ball had just been tossed into his figurative court.

He really wished people would just spell things out for him sometimes. Yes, he was a certified genius, but, hello, 'concussion./ ' He sighed.

"Okay. Dr. Weir didn't authorize it?" he tried, watching Ronon's expression. Of course he read nothing there, he almost never could. Somehow he'd managed to end up on a team with the three most inscrutable people in the Pegasus Galaxy. Jesus.

Although, as far as Ronon was concerned, Rodney had noticed that the more inscrutable he got, the less you would probably like what was on his mind.

"In fact," he continued slowly, trying to ignore the pounding in his skull. "You haven't brought it up with her. Were you planning to?"

More inscrutability.

"Oh god." He pressed his palm against the undamaged side of his forehead and clutched his head. "You're basically talking about staging a mutiny, aren't you? Of course you are. Because my week really needs to get worse. And you're going along with this?" He looked accusingly at Teyla.

"I merely suggested to Ronon that before we do anything we should speak to you and find out how the jumper modifications are going."

"Yes, well, they're...going." He couldn't stand Ronon's stare. If the man wasn't three times his size Rodney thought he really would throw something at him. "Look, it would be beyond stupid to go back there without any kind of shields and risk getting shot out of the sky. Even the alien's handheld weapon is capable of producing a hard enough blast of force to put a serious dent in the jumper. If they have, say, cannon-style weapons or guided missiles --"

"I'm not going to just stand around and wait this time, McKay," Ronon said.

That nearly took everything out of Rodney. He shook his head, and swiped a hand down his face tiredly. "Look -- just wait. A little longer."

"I'll go without you."

Rodney knew that wasn't an empty threat. "You can't fly the jumper."

"I can walk."

"You won't have to if you'd just --" he stopped, squeezing his eyes shut briefly. "Zelenka wants to spend a little more time with the weapon because he has a theory about how it works, and if he's right we might be able to modify the cloak to absorb the blast instead of just deflect it, which would be a hell of a lot more effective than just turning the cloak into a basic shield."

"How long will that take?" Teyla asked quickly, cutting off what would have probably been Rodney's introduction to Satedan slang of the insult-your-manhood variety.

"Too long," he said. "That's what I was trying to tell him when you came in. As far as I'm concerned, we need to modify the cloak, boost the shield power enough to withstand the kind of force we've speculated a really big version of this alien gun might be capable of, and leave the complicated stuff for later."

He glanced at the door to the back lab, and then continued more softly. "But if I can't convince Zelenka, I'll do the modifications myself. We would get it done faster together, but either way, it will be done my way, which means sooner rather than later. Then I'll be able to convince Dr. Weir to let us go without having to resort to the kind of thing that'll get us thrown in a holding cell when we get back."

He didn't know if he'd sold them on it, or at least sold Ronon on it. Teyla was willing to be cautious, and her faith in a person, once she'd come to the conclusion they were worth it, was pretty unshakeable. Even after he accidentally blew up the Dorandan solar system she had let him know, in small ways, that he hadn't lost her trust in him. He had appreciated it. A lot. He was almost certain she'd trust him on this, too.

Ronon, on the other hand, respected warriors and had faith in John Sheppard. Rodney was neither, and at times like these he suspected Ronon wondered why the hell Sheppard kept Rodney on their team.

"How soon?" Ronon finally asked.

Rodney hesitated. Presuming, worst case scenario, that he couldn't get Zelenka to help him; and presuming, best case scenario, he stopped seeing double... "An hour. Two at the most."

He expected an argument. Or a brush-off. A right hook, possibly.

Ronon let out a heavy breath, and for a moment something like weariness shadowed his face. "Okay."

Rodney glanced at Teyla, who nodded. "Okay," he said quietly. "Now will you both get the hell out of here and let me work?"

*

So the escape plan was not moving along as quickly as John would have liked. He slid carefully to the floor, swearing as the movement tweaked his leg. Once down he slouched tiredly and let his head thump back against the wall.

Obviously, the aliens weren't stupid enough to co-opt as a prison cell a room with an easy-access back door, but he knew how these doors worked. They used a magnetic lock enhanced by an electric current; even when the current was cut off, a fail-secure mechanism allowed the lock to hold. As long as the aliens couldn't figure out how to disable it, they'd consider the door permanently closed. Hell, they might not even consider it a door in that case.

But while John knew it could be disabled manually, he'd mostly managed that in the past by shooting out the control mechanism. Trying to do it hands-on -- in the dark, when his mind kept wandering and his hands shook -- was turning out to be more difficult than he'd expected. The fact that he had to keep sitting down to rest didn't help, either.

He only had one shot at this, though. If he didn't get the damn thing open and get out before the aliens came back, he was screwed. They couldn't miss seeing the gutted panel, and they didn't have to know exactly what he was doing to get pissed off at the fact that he was up to something at all.

_Which means_, he thought, _that it's time to get back up now. _

After a few moments of not getting up, he sighed. "Easy for you to say."

He tucked his foot under him and grabbed the door jamb and pushed himself up the wall. As had happened every other time, he started toppling sideways, but he was ready for it. He braced himself inside the doorframe with both hands and stood, just breathing, until the head rush passed and his leg stopped screaming at him.

He turned carefully, and hanging onto the wall with one hand felt for the open panel with the other.

He'd already disconnected every wire, filament and crystal he could find, and nothing had happened. Now he explored with his fingertips, tugging on anything sticking out from the metal backing, digging his fingernails into every seam he could find, pushing anything that felt like it could be a button. Nothing. A whole lot of nothing. He slammed his fist hard into the wall below the panel twice, and then drooped, giving the wall a final half-hearted smack.

"Think, John," he said through gritted teeth. "Just stop and think for a goddamn minute."

But it didn't help. He'd manhandled every last piece of anything stuck to the back of that --

_Wait wait wait wait wait -- _

 

Starting at the bottom, he ran two fingers clockwise around the inside edge of the open panel. As his fingers slid down the side nearest the door he ran into a seam that traced a rectangle in the middle of the metal trim. He pushed on it; it gave a little, and then stuck.

"Shit. Ten thousand year old --" He leaned into it as hard as he could without bending his fingers back at the first joint. "-- useless -- piece of --"

 

The click barely registered, but the soft hiss that followed and the brief movement of the door against his shoulder were unmistakable. He gasped, suddenly buzzing with adrenaline.

 

"Oh, _yes. _" He reached out and a breath of air even cooler than the air inside the cell caressed his hand.

"John Sheppard," he said as he hopped sideways and positioned himself in front of the narrow opening. "How are you so awesome?"

Balancing on his good leg, he slipped his hands into the opening and pulled as hard as he could in opposite directions; the door parted for him slowly but steadily. When he got it far enough open that he thought he could slip through, he stopped, breathing hard, peering into the pitch blackness on the other side.

He had considered the chance that a lot more of the Ancient structure could be occupied, and that he might get the door open only to end up facing a room full of unpleasantly surprised aliens. But, while lack of light didn't necessarily mean anything, the air spilling into his cell was even more stale and rank than the air in Atlantis had been when they first got there. Nobody had been on the other side of this door in a long time.

After a quick glance out of the cell to make sure nothing had snuck up on him while he worked, he squeezed through.

The darkness on the other side felt empty, old, and utterly complete, and he had no clue where he was in relation to a way out. It would have been nice to have a flashlight. It wasn't that the dark bothered him; ever since he was little he'd actually liked being in the dark. There was always the unknown, the possibility of something hiding out there, the risk of running into something unseen, but -- it was kind of like flying. You worried about what you could control, did your best to stay in the air, enjoyed the trip, and never mind the rest.

But since he'd be limping (if he was lucky; more likely he'd be hopping) his way blind through unfamiliar territory, and he didn't know how long it would be until the aliens discovered he was gone -- a flashlight would be nice.

He couldn't do anything about that, though. He figured the best thing to do at this point would be to just choose a direction and follow the wall until he got somewhere. Turning right, using the wall as a crutch, he started forward.

*

The various technicians on duty in the control room had been sneaking surreptitious glances at Elizabeth ever since she'd blown through, distracted and handing off everyone who tried to talk to her to Chuck, and locked herself in her office. She paid as little attention to them now as she had then.

She was stuck on an adrenaline high and couldn't come down. After all that time they had spent trying to talk to the alien -- a being that had no mouth, and yet the first thing she tried to do was _talk_ to it. A race created by the Ancients, which to anyone in her right mind would suggest that said engineered race may have inherited things from their creators, such as a written language, but of course she tested that theory last. She had no idea what the SGC and the international board had seen in her that recommended her to lead this expedition, because clearly she was an idiot.

After the failed attempt at vocal communication, she had set two data pads on the bed beside the alien, showing samples of both Ancient and Wraith writing. The alien had zeroed right in on the Ancient writing. It had picked up the pad and stared at it, its skin flashing through a startling array of color, white to yellow to green to dark gray. Then it offered the pad to her and stared silently at her, and she wondered what it was saying.

Taking a guess, and because it was what she intended to do next anyway, she handed it a blank data pad and a stylus. It took both, and after a brief examination of them and a bit of trouble getting the slender stylus situated in its long fingers, scrawled a line of large characters across the pad in a steeply slanted but neat hand. The characters were unmistakably Ancient.

She must have gone white herself, because the next thing she knew a Marine was at her side, holding her elbow and suggesting she may want to sit down for a moment.

A good quarter of an hour later and she had pages and pages worth of words, sentences, paragraphs. She had taken the data pad and told Carson to give the alien whatever it wanted -- another data pad to write on, a potted plant to commune with, anything -- and escaped to her office.

The fact that much of the writing didn't make sense when read as strictly Ancient told her that the aliens had made the language their own, evolving different grammatical constructs and different meanings for words. Still, it was so much more than she had hoped for.

"I can do this," she told herself softly, and dove into the text.

*

At first John thought he'd found a window. He'd been going he didn't know how long, nearly falling through open doorways into pitch black rooms half a dozen times, and at no point had he found a room or a section of wall that contained a window, grime-covered or otherwise.

Plus, he was so tired -- every time he stopped to rest, and leaned his head against the wall, everything started to fade away, and it was harder and harder to shake himself awake and move on. He was seeing things, too, figures that walked out of the darkness and then vanished; and now and then he thought he heard snatches of conversations between people who weren't there.

So when he noticed that things seemed to be getting brighter, he thought, _finally, finally a window, thank you god. _ It took him a few seconds to connect the growing light and the sound of approaching footsteps and realize what it really meant.

He hopped awkwardly backwards to an open door he had just passed, losing his balance as he made the turn into the room and stumbling to his hands and knees. Dragging himself around a bulky console just inside the door, he tucked himself in the corner between the wall and the console and swung his bad leg around to rest it parallel to the wall. This meant his back was to the door, but at least his foot wouldn't be sticking out into the middle of the room.

He knew it was the worst hiding place ever. On the other hand, the odds that he'd be easy to track were pretty good anyway -- the whole building, including the floor, had to be covered with up to ten thousand years worth of dust and he hadn't exactly been tip-toeing along.

The footsteps and the light paused at the door. He got a good look at the room -- it looked like some of the smaller labs back in Atlantis -- and then it was coming in.

He looked up, over his shoulder, and in a moment a pimply, gray, mouthless head came into view.

The alien was alone, and it paused when it saw him. Then, slowly, it stepped around to where they could both see each other clearly, stopping just out of reach.

It was armed, of course. The weapon hung loose in its hand, pointed only vaguely in his direction. It thumped the end of its lamp stick on the ground, and three thick tendrils uncoiled from the base and spread out over the floor, like a tripod; when the alien let go the lamp stood by itself.

The alien also carried a large bag over one shoulder. It reached inside and pulled out a smaller bag, which it tossed to John. The bag landed near him with a surprisingly solid clunk. Then the alien dropped slowly to one knee, set its weapon on the floor, and waited.

This couldn't be Red, John thought, not unless Red's personality was a hundred percent different when no other aliens were around. Blue, maybe? All of the aliens looked pretty much the same to him, but this one was doing its best to appear non-threatening, and Blue was the only one who had tried to be friendly so far.

He reached out; his arm felt heavy, and drawing the bag toward him toward him took a little effort. Dragging it onto his lap, he unrolled the top and looked inside.

His jacket was on top; beneath it was his vest. He poked around in the various pockets, hoping to find at least an energy bar, anything to eat or drink, but they were all disappointingly empty. Setting them both aside, he looked in the bag again and then froze, stunned.

The alien had given him back Ronon's gun and one of each of the P90s and 9mms they'd lost to the trees. He pulled out the P90 and checked the magazine; the damn thing was even loaded.

He raised an eyebrow at the alien, who watched without making any move for its own weapon.

"You must really want to be my friend," he said. Or else this was all part of a sneaky plan that involved gaining John's trust etcetera etcetera. The aliens looked freaky and nightmarish to John; maybe John looked especially moronic to them.

He made sure the safety was off on the P90 and got comfortable with it, aiming it at the alien. The alien appeared completely unconcerned about having a weapon aimed at it, making no move toward its own weapon and instead bending down to root around in its own bag again. John tightened his trigger finger, but didn't fire, waiting to see what the alien would come up with next.

It drew out several pouches, which it opened and set on the floor between itself and John. The first held a clump of leaves, the next something that looked like a handful of berries. A third was full of lumpy orange things John didn't even try to identify. The last pouch was double-bagged, and the alien handled it delicately, either with reverence or else with a strong desire not to touch what was in it. John hoped it was the latter, once he saw the contents. It looked like a hunk of raw meat. With fur still attached.

John was seriously hungry -- he had no idea how long it had been since he'd eaten anything -- but the selection had the opposite effect from appealing to him.

The alien wasn't done, though. Last, it brought out a round wooden box. Unscrewing the top, it tried to hand it to John.

When John didn't take the bowl, the alien moved one hand over the top of the bowl, which was filled with some kind of liquid. The tips of its fingers lengthened rapidly, dunking into the liquid, and the amount of whatever it was in the bowl began to decrease.

"Ah," John said. He sighed. Why did everything in this galaxy have to eat through its hands?

So the alien wanted John to understand the liquid was safe to...drink. Or eat. Whatever -- ingest via scary root-like fingers. Giving in to curiosity, John took the bowl and sniffed the contents. He smelled only damp wood; it was water, he realized, and suddenly all he could think about was how dry his mouth was.

"I'm really not supposed to drink alien water," he said, but, damn. "Carson is going to be furious if I do." He sloshed the water gently around in the bowl. Maybe a compromise? He wouldn't eat the strange alien berries or the raw meat, if he could drink the water?

After all, dehydration was becoming a definite issue. Horrible intestinal infestation by alien microbes, on the other hand, was only a _possibility_.

He took a tentative sip. The action stung his cut lip a little, but other than that, there was no weird tongue tingling or anything else that might indicate poison, pollution, whatever. It tasted fine. No, actually, it tasted fantastic. In fact, as he drank down the rest he was pretty sure he had never, ever tasted anything so good.

*

_ [My] name is [unknown]. _

Do you read this.

[You have?] our [writing?] but the word some is wrong.

You [unknown] [me] to [write?] more but I have not the knowledge of what to [unknown].

Why keep [me] here. Where go the [unknown -- I think this may be the name of the animals that came through the gate]. One of it is [my] [gift? maybe responsibility?] and if it [is rotten? spoiled? dead?] I take it to the dirt. It is [my] [gift / responsibility].

Do you let [me] leave. I [unknown] of the injury to the wall. I have fear. I have mistake. [Grateful] that body is repaired, [grateful for] good medicine. [Carson will be pleased with this]

I others will not harm you others. I do not be away from [home?]. I others need dirt, I others [is 'I others' their version of 'my people'? makes the most sense] my people need living light, my people need my people to [unknown; close to the word it used for 'living' but highly unconventional spelling].

Let [me] return in the false water [probably the Stargate]. I have fear still. I want to go [home?].

Elizabeth's earpiece came on. "Dr. Weir, this is Dr. McKay. We've made progress on the jumper modifications. I think we may be ready to go back to the planet."

_I want to go home. _

"Dr. Weir? Did -- did I not activate this stupid --"

Elizabeth rubbed her eyes and set down her notepad, tapping her earpiece. "Yes. Yes, I'm here, Rodney. I'll be up in just a minute."

*

Rodney tapped his fingers nervously against his thigh, pacing from the jumper halfway to the door, and back again. He was worried that something had gone wrong that he hadn't been told about. When he'd contacted Elizabeth to ask her to come to the jumper bay she hadn't answered right away; and when she finally did answer, she was distracted and distant.

But surely he would have heard if something had gone wrong. _Someone_ would have heard, and would have told him. Zelenka, Teyla, Ronon, they were all here with him, and even though they looked various levels of reserved or grim none of them gave any indication that it was for any reason other than the same worries and frustrations they'd been dealing with since yesterday afternoon.

So nothing had happened. Because he would have heard. Wouldn't he?

As soon as Elizabeth stepped into the jumper bay, followed by Major Lorne, Rodney strode up to them. "What's wrong? What happened?" he demanded.

Elizabeth pulled up short, staring at him as if he'd lost his mind. She looked at Lorne and then back at Rodney. "What? Is something wrong?"

"You -- you --" He paused. She seemed tired, but not particularly upset. "Nothing bad happened? Other than, I mean, more recently than the -- other bad thing that happened yesterday?"

"No," she said slowly. "Are you expecting something to happen?"

"No. Of course not." He watched her closely for a moment longer, but she just continued looking mildly confused. "Never mind."

He turned and led them to the jumper, hoping Elizabeth wouldn't think he was having concussion-induced fits of paranoia, or start questioning his health in general. His health was perfectly fine, of course, but he didn't want to have to answer any questions that sounded like _So did Dr. Beckett actually say you could leave the infirmary? _

"Zelenka and I have finished modifications on jumper three to turn the cloak into a shield. And can I just say that I find it incredibly strange that a group as advanced as the Ancients could equip their little space ships with cloaks but could not come up with a way to provide them with shields? That's got to be one of the stupidest things I've ever heard, and I've heard some pretty stupid things given the levels of intelligence I had to deal with before getting involved in the Stargate program."

"Rodney --" Elizabeth began.

"Yes, yes." He cut her off, raising a hand to massage his temples before he remembered he wasn't going to do that any more. They weren't going to let him go on this mission if they knew his head still felt like it was going to fall off. "Anyway. We've modified the cloak, and since this time the shield doesn't have to hold back an ocean we were able to increase the shield strength almost a hundred percent. It'll still be a significant drain on power but we believe --"

Zelenka cleared his throat pointedly. Rodney leveled a fiery glare at him. "Okay, _I_ believe that it will be more than capable of handling whatever the aliens throw at us."

"All right." Elizabeth nodded, but then she had to ask Radek. Naturally. Dammit. "Dr. Zelenka, do you agree?"

"No," Radek said. "Not entirely."

"For god's sake, we talked about this already --"

"Rodney," Elizabeth said sternly. "Please. I would like Dr. Zelenka's opinion."

Rodney shut his mouth and crossed his arms over his chest. He stared at Radek thinking _hot sauce in your coffee...Gryffyddian cotton mites in your bed...._

Radek straightened his glasses and briefly glowered back at Rodney.

"My opinion is that the probability of these aliens having a weapon powerful enough to overwhelm this shield is considerable. However." He paused, and then raised his hands in a gesture of defeat. "However, I cannot see that there is anything else we can do within a reasonable amount of time. It will take too long for me to attempt more complicated adjustments, and then they would have to be tested.... I agree with Rodney that this is, for now, the only option."

Rodney blinked, surprised. ... _or, half of my secret stash of Turkish coffee? The name and address of the company that made my ergonomic mattress? _ He caught Radek's gaze and gave him a small, grateful nod that he hoped nobody else saw. Radek managed half a worried smile in return.

Now all they needed was Major Lorne to get on board.

"I'm comfortable with the risk," Lorne said in response to Elizabeth's questioning look. "We need to get back there, see if we can verify that Colonel Sheppard is still alive and hopefully where he is."

Rodney decided the hot sauce would go into Lorne's coffee for even suggesting Sheppard could be dead.

"We're not planning to take on an alien army," Lorne continued, oblivious to the suffering in his future. "We'll do some recon, and if things get hairy we'll come back."

Elizabeth paused, and Rodney saw her share a glance with Ronon. He couldn't have begun to guess what passed between them; although, it did occur to him that maybe she wasn't as unaware of the near mutiny as he'd thought.

"All right," Elizabeth said finally. "It sounds like the mission is a go. When will the jumper be ready?"

"Give me half hour to double check the modifications," Radek said.

The group broke up; Rodney started to follow Radek into the jumper to help with the check, but Elizabeth called him back.

"Rodney," she said. "Can I speak with you for a moment? Privately."

Half a dozen excuses clicked through his head, but unfortunately none of them were the kind of thing he'd try on his boss. "Yes. Of course."

As they walked a short distance from the jumper, she said quietly, "You still look a little pale. Did Carson clear you for this?"

Rodney tried giving her a confident look but oh god did he suck at lying, and he felt his gaze slide away as he said briskly, "Would I be going if he hadn't?"

"Yes, you would."

_Damn. _

She stopped and faced him. "You have a half an hour, Rodney. I'd like you to spend it having Dr. Beckett examine you and make sure you're fit for this."

"Of course I am," he said, a little more desperately than he would have liked. "Elizabeth, you can't not let me go."

"Yes I can." She studied him for a moment. "I understand how much you want to go, Rodney. But if something goes wrong and you're unable to deal with it..."

"I'm fine," he said, and that wasn't a lie. His head still hurt, but he hadn't felt nauseous or had trouble with blurry vision for an hour at least. "Somebody needs to go who can monitor the shield modifications, and you know Zelenka hates going off-world."

"He'll go if I tell him to."

"Elizabeth --"

She raised a hand. "Rodney. You will not go on this mission unless Carson clears you. That's final."

He watched helplessly as she walked away. He was fine, dammit. She couldn't keep him behind. She _couldn't&lt;.i&gt;. _

"Shit," he snapped, and followed her to the infirmary.

*

_One drink of water, _ John thought, _and I'm letting a strange alien feel me up. Rodney's right, I am easy_. But it had been damn good water. It sort of sloshed around unpleasantly in his empty stomach when he moved now, but the rest of him felt a hundred times better.

Still, he wasn't entirely sure how this had happened. One minute he was waving his gun suspiciously in the alien's face; the next he was -- well, still suspicious, and with the gun, but also letting the alien work on his leg.

Something about the alien's manner made John feel he could trust it. He recognized that his instincts about strangers were pretty frequently crap, but in this case.... The alien was a little jumpy, but mostly it was just earnestly doing very helpful things. The situation reminded John of the time they shot down a Wraith dart after it beamed up McKay and Lieutenant Cadman. The damned thing had nearly come down on Carson Beckett's head, and he was a timid guy when it came to combat situations anyway; but when John got there moments later, there was Carson, slowly approaching the dart and telling the injured Wraith pilot soothingly, "I'm a doctor. I can help." For Carson it was just a reflex, a doctor thing. John got a similar vibe off of this guy.

"OW." He jerked, grabbing the alien's wrist with his free hand. The alien froze, hand hovering over the open wound clutching a damp, bloodied cloth. Its skin, which had been a very pleasant overall shade of sapphire while it worked, paled to a light blue and went all giraffe-blotchy. This was definitely the blue alien from before, John decided. That must be its 'freaking out but still trying to keep the wounded alien calm' look.

"Sorry," he said tightly, and forced his hand to unlock and release the alien's arm.

He dug his fingers into his thigh and gritted his teeth, and tried to not interfere again, or pass out. So far Blue had unstuck the gauzy bandage and cleared away most of the nasty goop that had initially been applied to his wounds. It was now carefully cleaning the wounds using only, as far as John could tell, water. The whole process hurt like hell, but ever since the goop had been wiped off, the skin around the wounds at least had stopped burning and itching, which was definitely an improvement.

Finally, Blue wrapped a long strip of plain, dry cloth around both wounds until they were well covered, tucking the loose end under to secure it. Then it sat back on its heels and looked at John.

He flexed his foot a little. The leg still hurt, but felt a little better. He nodded appreciatively at the alien, hoping it understood the gesture.

"Thanks," he said.

He wasn't sure what Blue had in mind for him now, but his plan was to get up off his ass and finish finding a way out of here. He wondered if Blue would try to take him back to a cell, or, if not, maybe he could somehow convince it to give him its lamp.

First, though: a statement of intent. He'd put on his jacket and vest earlier and clipped the P90 in place. He let go of the P90 and tucked the bag containing Ronon's gun and the 9mm under his arm. Reaching up and grabbing hold of the console, he levered himself to his feet. It took him a couple of tries; sitting down for so long had been a mistake, and he had to argue pretty fiercely to convince his inner lazy bastard to get up.

Blue chased the used bandages and crumpled, damp cloths into its bag as John struggled to get upright. Tossing the empty water bowls in after, it slung the bag over its shoulder and stood. As John began to hobble toward the door, leaning on the console as he went, Blue picked up the lamp. It waited a moment, letting the tripod-like tendrils draw up and resume their original position curled around the base of the stick, and then held the lamp out to John.

John stopped, raising an eyebrow. "Okay," he said slowly, taking the lamp. "That was...easier than I thought it would be."

Blue preceded him out of the room. Uncertainly, it made a gesture that seemed to indicate both itself and John, and another at the dark end of the hallway leading away from John's cell. John thought he understood: it wasn't taking him back, but apparently he wasn't getting rid of it quite yet either.

"All right, fine. For now." John shrugged. Could be a ruse or a trap, but it wasn't like he could knock the alien out or subdue it and tie it up. Just the thought of trying was exhausting. "Lead the way." When Blue only stared expectantly, he flapped a hand toward the hallway. "Go on."

It hesitated, nodded stiffly, and finally moved forward. It hadn't gone two steps, though, when it suddenly froze, and then darted back into the room.

It came back out looking, unless John was imagining things, a little sheepish, and carrying the weapon it had forgotten. It stuffed the weapon into its bag, leaving the muzzle sticking out at the ceiling, and started again down the hallway.

John snorted. "Yeah," he said as he lurched after it, using the lamp as a walking stick. "You and Beckett would get along great."

*

"Rodney," Carson said plaintively. "Hold _still_."

Rodney growled and tried not to fidget on the bed of the scanner. He had answered all of Beckett's questions, told him over and over that he felt fine, but Carson had insisted on having him scanned as a precaution.

He loathed the Ancient medical scanner bed. He was sure it exaggerated the severity of every little injury or infection or germ it found, and if it was responsible for grounding him from this mission, he would...oh, hell, he wouldn't do anything. There wasn't anything he could do to the stupid machine that would be satisfying and yet not get him thrown off a pier by a mob of angry Atlantean doctors and nurses.

"Can you just get it over with, for god's sake?" he whined as annoyingly as possible.

"It would go a lot faster if you would stop. Moving. _Around. _"

Rodney muttered something about medieval bedside manners under his breath and then closed his eyes and forced himself to be still.

A few interminable moments later, Carson said, "All right, that's it. You can get up now."

"_Thank_ you," Rodney said, rolling sideways and ducking out from under the top portion of the scanner before it had a chance to raise up. "Well?"

"It'll take a moment. Patience, Rodney."

"Patience," Rodney muttered. "You know, I have far more important things to be doing than standing around while you fiddle with your stupid Ancient machines." He tugged at his shirt and crossed his arms, and then uncrossed them, and then leaned on the nearest counter and drummed his fingers impatiently.

The door to the private room where the alien was being kept was closed. Elizabeth had gone in as soon as they arrived. He had forgotten to ask her how the whole talking to the mouthless alien thing was going, wrapped up as he'd been in scripting what he'd say to Beckett. If he'd known the whole script was going to be flushed down the toilet by the Ancient scanner....

"How's the --" he motioned at the door. "You know, with the alien? Gotten anything out of it yet?"

"Actually, yes," Carson said as he looked over the read-outs.

"What? Yes? You mean it talks? How?"

"Yes, it talks." Carson finished with the read-outs and powered down the machine. "But we can't work out how to communicate with it vocally just yet. What I meant was, Elizabeth discovered that it uses nearly the same written language as the Ancients."

Rodney looked over at the closed door again, suddenly wanting very much to be inside that room. "You mean we might be able to try negotiating with these people after all?"

"If we have to, yes, it looks that way." Carson headed back into the main infirmary ward; Rodney groaned and followed him.

"God, what now? Haven't you poked and prodded and scanned me enough?"

"I have," Carson said, moving to his work table and picking up a stack of files. "And you're fine. I see no reason you can't go back on active duty."

"Now just a minute -- wait, what?" Rodney stuttered. He was _fine_? He had the worst headache of his life, how could he possibly be _fine_? He opened his mouth to tell Carson exactly what he thought of that worthless so-called magical Ancient scanner, but luckily his brain engaged at the last minute. He closed his mouth with a snap and straightened. "Of course I'm fine." He hesitated - "I told you I was fine," -- and then fled.

*

It turned out to be a good thing John let the friendly alien tag along.

They hadn't gone far down the hallway when they reached a stairway, which Blue indicated they should take. Just making his way across a flat surface was tiring enough; John really didn't want to go hiking up and down staircases without knowing for sure he was headed the direction he needed to go.

They argued briefly via head-shaking, pointing and increasingly heated gesticulation. John shouted a little even though he knew Blue couldn't understand him, while it turned several spectacular shades of blue and purple until finally tossing its bag onto the ground and dropping to its knees.

In the thick layer of dust covering the floor, it sketched a simple picture of a box with five layers. On the bottom layer, it drew two lines, jabbing a finger impatiently at John and itself to make sure he understood the lines represented them. Then it zigzagged the finger through the dust from the line people up to the second layer from the top, where it drew a door. From the door it traced a line away from the box, at the end of which it spent more time than was strictly necessary drawing a detailed representation of the Stargate.

"Okay, okay, I got it," John grumbled. He handed the lamp to Blue and grasped the handrail, hopping onto the first step. "We go up."

Their progress was slow and, for John, exhausting. Blue never offered to help him, and he probably wouldn't have accepted the offer if it had. The only thing that would have actually helped anyway would have been for the alien to pick him up and carry him, which, no. By the time they made it to the fourth floor, John was dizzy and all of his muscles felt weak and shaky.

Breathing heavily, he sank to the top step and draped himself over the lower section of the railing. He closed his eyes, waiting for the thick buzzing filling his head to dissipate.

At first Blue stood next to him patiently. After a moment, though, John heard it move away. He wondered at first if it was finally leaving him, but it didn't go far. He listened to it shuffle around, stop, make rustling and rattling noises, shuffle around some more, and finally he had to know what the hell it was doing.

Pulling himself up, he waited out the head rush. He couldn't see from that angle what Blue was looking at so he shoved off the handrail and limped unsteadily over, grabbing hold of the lamp when his balance started to come undone.

Blue had found a corpse. Lowering himself down for a closer look, he saw that it was a very old corpse, but almost completely intact. Long white hair spread out in tangles on the floor; the skin had dried to cracked leather pulled tight around crabbed fingers and over an emaciated face. The lips had receded, and the mouth full of small, sharp teeth was bared in an even more exaggerated grimace than usual.

"Wraith," John said softly.

He looked around. The stairway let out onto a large room; the lamplight showed furnishings -- tables, chairs and benches, free-standing shelves and planters containing the husks of dead plants, arranged so that the room was sectioned off into little gathering areas. Some of the furniture was overturned. On a near table he saw several plates and dusty goblets, as if someone hadn't had a chance to clear their dishes after a meal.

He had seen this sort of thing in person once before, when he and Teyla had returned with her friend Orrin to his planet after the Wraith had been turned back from Atlantis. It had been weeks since Orrin's village was culled, but the silent houses had stood undisturbed, with their doors open, everything inside a picture of interrupted life. It was almost as if everyone had stepped out for a while and would be coming back.

Orrin had broken down and sobbed at the door of the home belonging to his daughter-in-law, who had vanished with all of her children, and John had had to walk away through the empty paths and alleyways. Keeping an eye out for left-over Wraith, he'd told himself, and rejoining Orrin and Teyla only when her quiet voice came through the communicator telling him they were ready to go.

He stood up, wobbling a little at first, and then moved away into the room. Blue left off its examination of the body and followed. They found two more bodies, human -- or rather, Ancient -- one of them particularly withered and frail, with the familiar Wraith feeding mark on what was left of its chest. The other was simply slumped forward over a table. John wondered if it was just luck, or advanced planning on the Ancient's part, that he or she had died at the moment that capture was imminent.

He could tell Blue was curious and wanted to examine the bodies and the relics more, but John was ready to go. He had to get back to his people. As Blue began to wander off toward one of the bodies, John caught its arm. "Huh uh," he said. "You can come back any time you want. Show me the way out." He waved his hand questioningly in a couple of directions as reinforcement.

Blue finally turned and pointed at a near wall. Now that he was looking, John could see large patches on the wall that were lighter than other places. He followed Blue over, and realized they were windows. And there, between them, was a door.

"Finally," he said.

By the time he got to it, Blue had found the device to the right of the door that would have activated the door if the power had been on. It was the same kind of device John had gutted to get his cell door open; Blue was a quick learner. He nodded when it gave him a questioning look, and it pried the panel off.

John reached in and found the fail secure release. This one was stuck even more securely than the one in his cell had been; he couldn't get it to budge at all. Taking Blue's hand, he guided its fingers to the button and pressed. It got the hint and in a moment the lock clicked, and the door slid open a few inches.

Blue didn't have to be prompted to pry the doors open, and got them a lot farther apart than John would have been able to even if he were healthy. Ronon hadn't had a chance to cut away enough vines to leave room for them to get through the door without pulling more of the plants down. John was pretty sure the vines were a sort of living security system, and he was trying to figure out how to get out without tripping an alarm or something when Blue reached out and firmly grabbed a hold of the nearest creeper.

With an eerie, crackling whisper, the curtain of vines twisted and curled up, retreating until the entire doorway was clear.

Blue stepped through, and John followed, cautiously. In a few steps he was outside. For several tense moments he waited, the hand not grasping the lamp moving quickly to the P90. Nothing happened, though. The forest remained quiet; the only movement came from wind-rustled leaves and from Blue, who stretched its arms out and seemed to soak up the cool, fresh air.

It was morning, John realized. Very early; the forest was still and dusky, and the air was damp and sweet with a dewy scent that reminded him of mornings at summer camp when he was a kid. He leaned on the lamp and breathed deeply, clearing the stale, dead air he'd been breathing inside the Ancient building from his lungs. A ways down the hill he could see snippets of red, purple and white prairie grass through the trees.

"You know," he said to Blue. "This just might work."

Then he heard a sound -- a barely audible whoosh in the distance. "Did you --" he stopped, glancing at Blue. "No, I guess you probably didn't hear that."

A second later a series of muffled shots, followed by harsh whumping sounds, carried up to them from the prairie.

John said, "Damn, I hope that's not what I think it is," and then realized he had a more immediate problem.

Aliens stepped out from behind the trees all around them. All of them were armed; a few of them were accompanied by the dog things. Blue froze and then reached hesitantly for the weapon in its bag. John grabbed its arm to stop it, and moved his hand away from his own gun. They were completely surrounded -- a glance behind showed four more aliens on top of the Ancient structure as well. It was entirely possible that Blue was part of this ambush and had reached for its weapon for show, but just in case, John wanted to avoid provoking a firefight with the two of them dead center.

The aliens looked up nervously as a jumper passed over the trees above them, and then a few came hastily forward to take his weapons.

Dammit. He'd nearly been able to meet them halfway. The jumper had withstood fire from the alien weapons; that was good. But, while he had no idea what their plan was, he knew it wouldn't help anything if he got buried in another underground cell.

As soon as they were disarmed, they were grabbed and hustled toward a nearby rock wall. An alien waiting there held back a thick, matted screen of vines and moss to reveal a hidden crevice. He was half-dragged quickly down a dim, sloping tunnel cut first through the rock and then the hill itself. The air was close and thick with the smell of earth and of the aliens' peculiar scent. He tried to fight but he was too damn weak, and they simply lifted him a few inches off the ground whenever he tried to plant his foot to slow them down.

"Fuck," he told them. "You guys have the shittiest timing ever."

*

Lorne pulled the jumper up as soon as they exited the gate, cutting a short path through the tops of the tall grass before pulling clear. Almost immediately the jumper shuddered, the sound and sensation both like being struck several times by a giant hammer.

"We're taking fire," Lorne said. "Shields are holding."

Rodney checked the read-outs from the back of the jumper. The first few strikes registered the same amount of force the alien's weapon had used to punch a hole through the gate room wall; the last pair registered significantly greater force. The shields handled it, but he really, really hoped the aliens didn't in fact have some sort of enormous doomsday version of the weapon tucked away in the grass.

The weapons fire didn't follow them away from the Stargate, though. The jumper left the grassland and continued unhindered out over the forest.

"You've passed over the position of the Ancient outpost," he pointed out. "Any time you want to start scanning for Colonel Sheppard's life signs would be good."

But Lorne only whistled low. "Now, that," he said matter-of-factly. "Is a sight."

"What are you talking about?" Rodney moved to the front of the jumper and slid into the co-pilot's seat. "Oh. Wow. Are those buildings?"

The view reminded Rodney of aerial photographs of ruins rising out of the jungles of South America. These structures showed no sign of having been dulled by time or abandonment, though. Colorful, cylindrical towers rose up between the trees, each narrowing at the top to twisting spires, gentle domes, or stylized, leaf-like crowns. Some were as narrow in diameter as the larger trees themselves, some several times as big. He spotted one building complex made up of several towers set in a wide circle around an open center. The city broke up the uniformity of the dark green canopy, making it look like a garden, and it fanned outward from the site of the Ancient outpost and over the forested hills for as far as Rodney could see.

"If you'd gone over the hill you would have tripped over these guys," he said to Ronon, who had come forward to look over Rodney's shoulder.

Ronon didn't respond and his face remained expressionless, but Rodney imagined they were all thinking the same thing. The scope of this civilization made sense, given Rodney's original energy readings and the alien's advanced weapons technology, but it wasn't what they'd hoped for. If Sheppard was somewhere in the middle of that sprawling city, the four of them in a single jumper sure as hell wouldn't be able to get him out.

The jumper rocked again as blasts came from the city below. Lorne held it steady, saying, "I'm scanning for life signs now."

The aliens didn't show up as life signs to their equipment, so the display screen that appeared in response to Lorne's mental command was for the most part a big blank. It made Sheppard easy to find, though. "There he is," Lorne said. "Looks like he's back near the outpost."

Lorne turned the jumper; as they approached Sheppard's position, he took the jumper lower and banked it. "Let's see if we can get a visual --"

Rodney didn't register at first what he was seeing. It looked like an explosion of green, and he had a brief horrible moment when he thought the aliens had launched a weapon at them that was so powerful it was actually bringing half the forest with it. By the time the whirlwind resolved into familiar ropes of foliage it was too late.

The jumper lurched, throwing everyone forward, and went into a sudden dive as it was pulled up short by the vines. Rodney heard Lorne swearing as he tried to regain control. The jumper came up out of the dive and leveled off; anchored by the vines, it swung around in a forced circle.

"What the hell?" Lorne said.

"Vines," Rodney croaked. He gave Ronon, who was picking himself up from where he'd collapsed on top of Rodney, an unhelpful shove.

"Vines? Are you kidding me?"

"Yes, well, I -- I admit I didn't expect they'd be able to catch a jumper -- can't you just gun the thing and --"

"That's what I'm trying to do, but they're too strong," Lorne said. "But I think I have an idea. Hold on."

As soon as Ronon had made it back to his seat and buckled in, Lorne aimed the jumper skyward; it jerked to a stop pointed straight up and then began to spin, as if Lorne was trying to drill a hole in the sky. The inertial dampeners counteracted the physical motion, but the puffy clouds provided a strong visual cue.

_Oh god_, Rodney thought. _I hope the Ancients put barf bags in these things. _

Bit by bit the jumper began to nudge forward as the vines began to tear loose below. Then suddenly it rocketed free, hitting the upper atmosphere of the planet before Lorne slowed them and brought them back down through the clouds.

"That was...interesting," Lorne said.

Rodney stared at him speechlessly. He hadn't thought he'd ever meet anyone with a more infuriatingly dry and laid-back attitude than John Sheppard until he'd met Major Lorne.

"I've nearly been killed by those vines twice in two days," he snapped. "I don't think 'interesting' is exactly the word I'd use for it."

Lorne nodded. "You're right. They're obviously demonstrating sentience. I think I'll upgrade that to 'pretty damn cool.'"

Rodney snorted. "Oh, you're hilarious. How about putting your staggering wit to work figuring out how to get past those things to get Sheppard instead of taking cheap shots at me, hm?"

"Sorry, Doctor," Lorne said, almost sincerely.

"Isn't this thing armed with missiles?" Ronon said. "Couldn't we shoot down the trees and vines around Sheppard's position, and then go in?"

"No," Lorne angled the jumper to a position high above where the life signs display indicated Sheppard was and put it into hover mode. Sheppard had moved further into the alien territory, but was still near the outpost. "We'd have to take out any trees he was close to and we couldn't do that without killing him. Plus, he's in the city now, and there are probably a lot more of those aliens around. Dr. Weir doesn't want any casualties at this point unless absolutely necessary."

"So, what are you saying, we just --" Ronon started, seething, but Rodney cut him off.

"No, we aren't going to just give up, so settle down." Rodney swiveled the seat around and glared at him. "And no threats to open the jumper and parachute down alone, please. What we're going to do is sit here and run scans and see if we can gather some other possibly useful bit of intelligence that will allow us to mount a rescue without blowing up the rescuee." Turning to Lorne, he said, "Major, I think the first thing we should -- what are you looking at me like that for?"

Lorne was eyeing him with amusement. It occurred to Rodney then that in these situations it was usually the military commander present -- Sheppard, except in this case it would be Lorne -- coming up with the strategy and giving orders to scan for intel. He flushed. "Do you want to argue chain of command, or can we get on with this?"

Lorne straightened attentively, still half-smiling. "Whatever you say, Doctor."

*

The tunnel exited into a huge, half-moon shaped room in a building that John thought looked like it had been grown rather than built. The wall was made of a single piece of wood with a discernible vertical grain stretching from floor to ceiling. It was covered with what looked like bark which, painted a dull off-white, had the appearance of unusually thick stucco.

There were windows, huge, and all approximately the same size, but none were of a uniform shape. They were round, oval, oblong -- John could imagine them having started out as huge knots in the wooden walls, which had then been hollowed out and inset with glass.

It looked to John like some sort of staging area. Almost the entire room was empty, except for a set of high-backed chairs at one end and a few long benches shoved up against the straight back wall. Part of that wall had been bricked in with large, irregular stones; they covered, he realized, the rear outer wall of the Ancient ruin.

There was a small group of unarmed aliens already in the room when they got there. They were all clustered around windows, looking out and up into the trees. Through an open door leading outside, he could see more aliens in a sort of stone-paved courtyard. They stood with their faces turned upward, weapons aimed into the treetops. All of them looked, John thought, afraid.

The jumper must be up there. Doing what, though?

The aliens in charge of him either weren't worried or else had orders to hold him back, because they stayed right where they were despite his efforts to tug them forward. Blue, on the other hand, pitched enough of a fit that the guards in charge of it had no choice but to be dragged over to a window with it.

He could hear shooting now, coming from a little ways into the city and, it sounded like, from high up, probably in the trees. As the sound of weapons fire got closer, he saw one of the aliens outside move to a tree and place both hands on it. John remembered Blue clearing away the foliage blocking their way out of the Ancient structure, controlling it with just a touch. But John was sure the vines couldn't take down a jumper.

Could they?

There was a flurry of sound high above them, and then the trees seemed to groan. The alien jumped back from its tree, and moved nervously away.

The groaning sound got louder; soon a sharp snapping sound, like rifle fire but twice as loud, split the air at increasingly frequent intervals. The aliens on the ground outside had let their weapons fall and were backing toward the building.

There was a sudden explosive crack that sent the aliens running inside, and an enormous branch crashed to the ground, narrowly missing them. Another branch hit the ground a little further away and by the sound of it a few more were coming down nearby.

John listened for a bigger sound, the sound of a heavy machine plummeting through the treetops and smashing into the ground. It never came; only abrupt silence followed the chaos. The jumper appeared to have gotten away. He closed his eyes briefly, letting out the breath he'd been holding.

When he opened his eyes, Blue was looking at him. It gestured out the window, but he didn't know what it was trying to say. The movement broke the rest of the aliens out of their stunned immobility, though. Of the armed aliens, most stepped back outside, guarding the entrance to the building with their eyes on the sky. A few stayed inside, and the way they deferred to while also keeping an eye on the unarmed aliens made John think he was seeing a group of their leaders. Obviously they were important people, at any rate.

Whoever they were, they finally caught sight of John; all stared at him, and a couple went suddenly pale. Their bodyguards stepped between them and John, though, and eventually they were able to ignore him. Except for one, a particularly tall, thin one that kept looking over at him all through the ensuing conversation; at one point John thought it was going to come over, but it never did.

For the most part Blue became the center of attention, as well as another alien which, given that it turned red early on in the conversation and stayed that way, John thought might be his initial captor.

The group discussion started out silent and mostly still, with all of the aliens staring at each other motionlessly so that John had no clue who might be 'speaking' nor about what. Blue became more and more agitated, though, darkening rapidly to its angry purple color, and suddenly it began punctuating its nonverbal tirades with the kind of broad hand gestures John and it had used to communicate earlier.

This surprised the hell out of the other aliens. A couple of them hopped back a couple of steps the first time Blue flapped a hand at them. The rest of them stayed put but flinched at every gesture; Red even ducked once when Blue jabbed a finger violently in its direction.

It was actually a little funny to watch - at least until the entire delegation relocated to the chairs at the other end of the room. John groaned.

"Oh, you've got to be kidding me," he muttered to himself.

It looked like their little debrief had just turned into a full-out meeting. These aliens might look bizarre, eat through retractable roots in their fingertips, and have no verbal language that he could make out, but if they were in any way like humans at all, that meant this was going to take for-fucking-ever.

He worked at wrenching his arms out of the grip of his guards, and when they realized all he wanted to do was sit down, they let go and let him crumple to the floor. He stretched his leg out, trying to get comfortable. Ever since coming through the tunnel, stabbing, hot pain was shooting through his leg again, and bright spots of blood had soaked through the bandages.

Exhaustion was crashing through him in waves, but even though he had nothing to lean against he forced himself to stay sitting up. He knew if he were to lie down he'd fall asleep, and the only thing he could do now was try to stay awake and alert. He hated being in these situations. His team was out there somewhere doing who knew what, and he couldn't do anything to help them. The aliens were at the other end of the room possibly plotting his sticky end, and he couldn't do anything about that right now either.

He was ready for this to be over. He'd been ready several times since it had begun, but sitting there, staring out the open door at the alien sentries and seeing for the first time the strange, cylindrical buildings rising up through the forest a little distance away, he felt incredibly helpless. And he was ready to go home.

*

"We should contact Atlantis," Lorne said.

Ronon, who had been pacing up and down the back compartment of the jumper for the last twenty minutes, stopped. "What for? You haven't found anything yet."

"That's because there's apparently not a whole lot to find," Rodney said shortly.

He felt sick. He wasn't sure if it was headache-related or due to the fact that after just shy of an hour of gathering information they essentially had squat. They had compiled a short list of information, yes, but none of it suggested any quick and easy way to liberate Sheppard, which was the material point.

They had a rough geographical layout of about a five mile radius of the city, which told them that there were many cylindrical buildings of various sizes all the hell over the place. They had been able to separate out energy signatures enough to tell that artificial power was being generated from a location at the edge of the five mile radius, and that power was utilized in the buildings to varying degrees though there was no obvious indication what it was used for.

Despite the aliens confounding their life signs sensors, they could now track some of them, having picked out the unique energy signature given off by their weapons. That told them was that there were armed aliens basically everywhere in the city and around the Ancient ruin and the Stargate, which, no kidding.

They had also determined that, based on signatures similar to the hand-held weapons' but much, much stronger, the aliens did have about a half dozen presumably more powerful weapons scattered throughout the city. There was one directly below them, in or on the building in which Sheppard (whose life sign had so far remained stationary and, thank god, strong) was being held. They could only guess why those weapons hadn't been used yet. Maybe they didn't work; maybe the aliens didn't actually want to kill them; maybe the aliens were just waiting for the jumper to not be hovering over their city before blowing it out of the sky.

None of this changed what they already knew or had postulated previously. None of it gave them an advantage. None of it helped.

Rodney crossed his arms over his chest and blew out a breath. "We're in range, just dial from here."

They saw the gate in the distance become a shimmering blue droplet in the sea of red and purple grass.

"Atlantis," Lorne said. "This is Jumper Three checking in."

After a moment, Elizabeth's voice came through. "Everything okay, Major?"

"Yes, ma'am. We've verified that Colonel Sheppard is alive and have determined his location. The shields held up to the alien weapons fire." Lorne hesitated. Rodney knew he didn't like reporting back empty-handed. "Other than that, there's not much to report. We've gathered a little information. Not sure how useful it is."

"Did you run into anything bigger than the hand-held weapons?"

"We're pretty sure they've got more powerful weapons," Rodney said. "But they haven't tried using them on us yet."

"That may be good news. Maybe these aliens prefer not to fight."

Rodney said nothing, but he doubted it. They had yet to meet anyone in the Pegasus galaxy with advanced weapons capabilities who weren't itching to use them. And the alien who came through the gate certainly hadn't hesitated to start blowing holes in things.

Lorne remained diplomatic. "It's possible, ma'am. I wouldn't count on it, though."

There was silence at the other end of the line for several moments, and then Elizabeth said,

"I'd like you to come back."

Ronon punched the bulkhead and stalked to the back of the jumper; even Teyla's face hardened with frustration.

"We'd prefer it if you'd order us to do something reckless yet heroic to rescue Colonel Sheppard," Rodney said, but only because it would probably go over better than _over my dead body_.

He could hear Elizabeth's smile. "I know, Rodney, but I need you to come back and escort myself and our guest to the planet."

The four of them stared at each other as that sunk in.

"You seriously think you can negotiate with these -- whatever they are?" Rodney asked, at the same time Lorne said,

"Are you sure that's wise, ma'am? These aliens already have our city's military commander. Do you want to give them a shot at rounding out the set with you?"

"Yes, Rodney, I do," Elizabeth said. "And I understand your concern, Major, but given the method of communication we'll have to use, I'm the best one for the job."

Rodney could tell Elizabeth had made up her mind. He always thought it was funny when she accused Colonel Sheppard of taking unnecessary risks since she did her fair share of jumping into dangerous situations. And she did so usually armed with little more than a couple of Marines and her belief that she could talk anybody into anything. At least Sheppard carried several guns, grenades, and a scary, deadpan kamikaze attitude.

"Come back to Atlantis," she continued. "We'll look over the information you've gathered and figure out the best way to do this."

Lorne looked at Rodney expectantly, as if he thought Rodney could somehow convince Elizabeth Weir that she shouldn't attempt probably doomed negotiations with a brand-spanking-new, exciting, fascinating, oh and don't forget hostile, alien race. Rodney snorted.

"You heard the lady," he muttered, slumping back in his seat and buckling up.

Lorne gave up and reached for the controls. "Yes, ma'am. We're heading back now, but there are several armed aliens guarding the gate on our side. Wait for our signal before dropping the gate shield."

"Understood. See you soon."

Lorne guided the jumper toward the gate and down, cutting a steep path through the air so that they would have plenty of time to level off over the prairie before reaching the gate. A solid line of aliens stood on the stone platform in front of the gate. The shields still had plenty of power, so Rodney wasn't worried about being shot down. On the other hand....

"Dr. Weir isn't going to be too thrilled if you run over a bunch of aliens right before she wants to begin negotiations with them," he said.

"Nah," Lorne said. "They'll get out of the way." He narrowed his eyes, though, watching the aliens through the window as the nose of the jumper rapidly approached the grass tops.

The jumper had begun to level out when their view abruptly disappeared. Lorne shouted "Oh shit --" as Rodney saw green and threw his hands out to brace himself.

The jumper flipped. The front end of it slipped from the vines' grasp; the green went away; Rodney looked up at the ground, at nothing but pale yellow grass stalks, and everything went black.

*

Rodney heard silence.

The seatbelt cut into his stomach making it hard to breathe. He struggled frantically but his legs only tangled themselves up beneath the jumper console. Everything looked wrong and then he remembered the goddamned vines and _upside down, we're upside fucking down. _

There must have been a moment of impact, he thought as he groped for the belt release. He couldn't remember it, but there must have been because his ears still rang, the jumper had stopped moving, and _upside DOWN. _

The belt clicked free and he threw his arm out as he fell head-first onto what had been the jumper's ceiling. He ended up knee-capping himself as his legs caught between the seat and the console, and his shins grated hard against the console's edge.

"Ow, ow, ow, crap," he gasped, curling up and grabbing his legs.

Lorne and Teyla managed to extricate themselves more gracefully from their belts. Ronon crashed down in a heap like Rodney had, but Rodney figured it wasn't from lack of grace, it was just Ronon taking out his anger on the jumper by throwing himself at it.

"Is everyone all right?" Teyla asked shakily.

Rodney continued moaning in response.

Lorne reached down to give him a hand up, saying, "I think we're all okay, but the jumper doesn't seem to be feeling so good."

The jumper was in fact completely dead. Once he got Rodney up, Lorne reached up and tried a few of the controls; nothing happened.

Their earpieces crackled.

"Jumper Three, this is Atlantis. We haven't received your IDC. Is everything all right?"

Lorne tapped his communicator. "This is Jumper Three. We've run into a little problem."

"What kind of problem?"

"Well...the crash-landing kind."

A pause, and then, keeping her voice carefully level, Elizabeth said, "What happened?"

"It was the vines, the ones that attacked me before. Apparently they are in fact strong enough to take down a jumper." Rodney hung onto the upside down console, ducking his head to look out at the path they'd cut through the prairie. They'd flattened grass quite a ways back, and then scoured out a short but fairly dramatic gouge in the earth; in fact, he was looking up out of a shallow rut. He wondered if they'd be able to get the back hatch open.

"There are several of the aliens guarding the Stargate," Lorne was saying, in response to Elizabeth's question about whether they could make it back to Atlantis on foot. "I doubt they're going to just let us walk through. Looks like you may need to send somebody here to escort us."

"Where did you come down?"

Lorne looked out the window; from their angle they could just see the tree line about a hundred yards away. "Not too far from the gate."

"All right. Sit tight; we'll be there soon. We're shutting down the gate from our end, so we'll be out of touch for a bit."

"Dr. Weir -" Lorne said quickly. "I don't know what you have in mind, but I don't think this is the best time to make contact with these people for the purposes of diplomacy. I recommend you send a team in a shielded jumper to bring us out, and we can reevaluate our position then."

There was another pause at the other end; finally Elizabeth said, "We'll take that under advisement. Anything else, Major?"

"No, ma'am. We'll be here waiting for you."

The silence that followed was maddening. "You know, as a rescue party we pretty much suck," Rodney said, mostly just to say something, but also because it was so true.

He backed up against the nearest wall and slid to the floor with a thump. Teyla sat down cross-legged near him.

"It is rare that a mission goes as planned," she agreed. She was using her 'look at the bright side' voice. Rodney hated that voice. "However, things will work out. Because it is also rare that they do not."

"Yeah, well, maybe we're due." He squirmed, trying to get comfortable. The ceiling of the jumper had not been built for people to sit on. "It's just -- this waiting. I feel like all we've done since yesterday afternoon is sit around waiting."

A disturbing realization dawned on him then. "Oh my god. I really, really want to be out _shooting_ at something right now." He blinked at Ronon. "Is this how you feel all the time?"

Ronon just stared at him for a moment, and then all of the rage drained abruptly from his expression and he laughed - one short, deep chuckle. "Sometimes. ...pretty often, actually."

"That's...frightening," Rodney said. "Also kind of comforting."

Lorne and Teyla were grinning, too, even though the tension in the jumper hadn't eased at all. 'Gallows humor,' Rodney thought, so named because it was popular among people who were probably going to _die. _

Ronon retrieved the P90 he'd been using in place of his usual gun from where it had landed during the crash, and handed it to Lorne. He pulled another out of the upended weapons chest for himself, and tucked a 9mm into his waistband. Lorne clipped his P90 to his vest and settled back against the bulkhead, staying on his feet to watch out the jumper window.

"Do you think the aliens guarding the gate will come to investigate the crash?" Teyla asked.

"Well," Lorne shrugged. "With the gate closed they might decide they can spare a few to have a look. That's not the only direction they could come from, though."

There were plenty of aliens in the forest not far away, after all. And when they came, which the odds were they would --

"You realize that no power to the jumper means no power to the shield," Rodney said.

Lorne nodded. Of course he knew. One of the first things people -- especially personnel assigned to off-world teams - learned after arriving in Atlantis was what it feels like to be a sitting duck.

Rodney felt a hard tap on his shoulder. He looked at the 9mm Ronon held out to him, sighed, and took it. "Well, at least I'll probably get to shoot at something."

*

"Major," Teyla said.

"I see them."

There was movement in the tall grass on either side of the torn-up earth. For a while, the aliens remained hidden, but soon, cautiously, they stepped out.

All Rodney could see were legs and torsos; the aliens were incredibly tall, and the jumper was sunk several feet in a hole. What used to be the lower section of the jumper nose angled out over the window as well, partially obscuring their view.

Beside him, Lorne slowly knelt. He didn't go all the way to his knees, just went down far enough to get a better look outside, leaning against the jumper wall to support himself. He held the P90 ready, even though firing it at the window would be more dangerous to them than to the aliens, given how thick the glass was.

Rodney heard Lorne's slow exhalation of breath and saw him become eerily still.

"Here they come," Lorne said.

Rodney couldn't help but take a step back as two of the aliens cautiously approached the window. He could see their weapons now, held low, covering anything that might come at them from the front section of the jumper.

One stopped a few paces back while the other continued forward, crouched, and bent its head to look in the window.

When it saw the four people looking back at it, it froze. Then it stumbled back a step and its weapon swung up.

"Down!" Lorne shouted, diving at Rodney and shoving him to the floor.

A blast hit the window like an explosion. Rodney tucked himself up against the narrow frame along the bottom of the window and flattened himself as much as he could, covering his head with his arms as the aliens opened up on them.

The jumper shuddered non-stop; the window imploded. A heavy weight landed on top of Rodney and for a second he expected pain -- shards of thick glass cutting through him -- but he realized it was Lorne covering him with his own body.

And then as abruptly as the shooting had started, it stopped.

Rodney didn't move; neither did Lorne. Rodney squeezed his eyes shut and thought _oh god don't be dead, do not be dead. _

"Dr. McKay," Lorne finally said softly. "Still with me?"

Rodney almost laughed. "Yes," he squeaked. "But if you don't stop squashing the air out of me I won't be for long."

Lorne shifted slightly. It didn't help, but Rodney was too relieved to mind. He just bitched out of reflex; at the moment, for all Rodney cared Lorne could tap-dance on his head if he wanted to.

"How's everybody in the back?" Lorne said, still keeping his voice low.

Teyla and Ronon answered quietly from the rear of the jumper. Rodney thought they must have taken cover behind the bulkheads.

"What do we do now?" Rodney tried to keep his voice from hitching hysterically; it didn't quite work.

Lorne didn't answer right away. Rodney took a deep breath as Lorne scooted off of him. A heavy _thunk_ vibrated the floor beneath his cheek; he lifted his head a little and saw Lorne awkwardly easing a chunk of window glass off his back. The window mostly lay in broken slabs around them, very little of it still stuck to the frame.

Lorne grimaced and rolled his shoulder.

"Are you all right?" Rodney whispered.

"Yeah," Lorne nodded. "Just a little banged up."

Outside the jumper it sounded like a small mob had joined their initial handful of attackers. Rodney could hear them trampling through the grass and dirt, surrounding the front of the jumper. After a few moments, the noise stopped.

They waited. Rodney wondered if this was the point when they would meet the aliens' bigger guns. Possibly something portable, that could obliterate the jumper with one shot. _Fun! _

But nothing happened. No one started shooting at them again, with big guns or small ones.

"Stay down," Lorne said. "I'm going to --"

A voice from outside cut him off.

"McKay?"

Rodney froze. Lorne jerked his head around to meet Rodney's eyes, stunned, and Teyla whispered from the back, "Is that --?"

"Teyla? Ronon? Lorne, Coughlin, Reed - dammit, is anybody in there?"

Rodney's mouth was dry. "Sheppard?"

For a moment Sheppard didn't answer; when he finally did Rodney could hear him fighting to keep his voice steady.

"Rodney, are you guys okay?"

Rodney glanced around the ruined jumper, meeting Teyla's wide eyes briefly as she stole a glance around the bulkhead. "Oh, you know, just another relaxing visit to an exotic alien paradise."

He heard Sheppard laugh, a frighteningly tired sound somewhere between a cough and a gasp.

"So, ah, what's going on out there? Is -- is it safe --" Rodney stumbled over the words; activity in the back of the jumper was distracting him. "I mean, can we come out?"

Ronon pushed himself up, staying hidden. Rodney saw the 9mm in his near hand, and he would have bet anything that the P90 was ready in the other hand, too.

"At this point --" Sheppard broke off, and then said something less loudly, to someone closer to him. "You know what, fuck off. Jesus, I've seriously had enough of you --"

Rodney scrambled to his knees and peeked out to see Sheppard sitting on the ground several yards away, shoving the muzzle of a gun out of his face. The alien holding the weapon was a startling shade of orange-red, and it wasn't happy with John's defiance. As it swung the weapon back around, bat-like, Ronon stepped out behind Rodney.

The warning shot grazed the alien's head; it leaped back and its weapon, along with every other weapon around them, swung up and took aim at the jumper.

"No!" Sheppard stretched a hand out to the alien, trying to stand. "Holy shit, Ronon, put it down." He sank back to the dirt, gritting his teeth; Rodney saw the pain flash across his face, and saw him clutch his leg just above a wide, blood-stained bandage.

"You're outgunned, Ronon," Sheppard ground out, "Put it down. That's an order, do you understand me?"

For a moment, Ronon didn't move. His mouth was set in an easy half-smile, his eyes heavy-lidded; when he got that look on his face Rodney had come to expect that someone was either about to die or else at least wish they were dead. The only problem was that if he followed through, it wouldn't just be the orange alien ending up dead. The other aliens would start shooting and not stop until the jumper and everyone in it had been liquefied.

And Ronon knew it. His gun hand flinched, and his expression shuttered from deadly calm to just dangerously angry.

Lorne stood slowly, leaving his own weapon down and putting himself between Ronon and the orange alien's aim while Ronon let his 9mm and the P90 clatter to the floor.

Rodney stood too, and he heard Teyla do the same behind him.

None of the aliens started shooting, and Sheppard relaxed visibly, his shoulders slumping forward. His hands were clenched in fists, white-knuckled, pressing hard against his thighs. "Thank you," He shook his head, saying shakily, "Jeez, I'm gone two days and suddenly nobody wants to listen to me anymore."

Ronon grunted. "What now?"

Sheppard said, "Hang on."

He twisted where he sat, trying to get the attention of a pair of aliens standing back behind the armed ranks. He didn't say anything to them, just thrust his hand up and pointed at the orange alien.

The two aliens hesitated, and then pushed forward. Neither of them was armed, but Rodney still held his breath as one of them stepped up to John, towering over him. But it only stopped behind him, ducking its head to peer curiously into the jumper. The other alien walked around and placed a hand on the barrel of the orange alien's weapon.

To Rodney's surprise, after a moment of silent staring, the orange alien flared red, and then lowered its weapon. The rest of its kind followed suit.

"Huh," John said thoughtfully. "I wasn't actually expecting that."

"Should we come out now, sir?" Lorne asked.

"Yeah, you might as well." Sheppard jerked his head at the now red alien beside him. "I'd rather not give Red here an excuse to go in after you. It's got a bit of a mean streak."

Sheppard said it lightly, but Rodney could see the proof of it. One side of Sheppard's face was black and blue. They climbed out of the jumper and slowly approached the group, keeping their hands held out and visible. As they got closer Rodney also saw mottled, dark bruises around Sheppard's neck, and noted that a split in Sheppard's upper lip still looked raw. He wondered if the red alien was responsible for the leg wound as well. _Jesus. _

"Major, what the hell did you do to my ship?" Sheppard was saying.

"Sorry, sir," Lorne said, in a way that really meant _right, because YOU have never crashed a jumper. Sir. _

They stopped a couple feet away from Sheppard and his guards. The half-circle of aliens blocking the other end of the path carved into the prairie spread out into a full circle, so that the team was completely surrounded. Rodney glanced back and got a look at the jumper. Huge dents had mangled the metal frame around the broken window. It looked like it had been through a meteor shower.

"Uh huh. You will be sorry when Dr. Zelenka gets a hold of you." Sheppard spoke to Lorne, but his eyes moved over the four of them, now that he could see them up close, looking for signs of injury. "Those things are his babies."

Rodney felt strange, standing when Sheppard was stuck on the ground. Even sitting there, hollow-eyed and battered, swaying a little as if his strength was cutting in and out, Sheppard was intently focused on his people -- gauging their well-being, making eye contact with each one of them in turn to both question and reassure. It should be the other way around, Rodney thought -- Sheppard on his feet, one of them down there.

Apparently satisfied that they were all relatively okay, John tilted his head back and looked up at the alien standing behind him. He waved his hand in a broad circular gesture that encompassed humans as well as aliens, and said, "What's the plan?"

"Colonel," Teyla said. "Can they...hear you?"

"Huh?" He looked at her blankly. "Oh, the," he waggled his hand. "The talking thing. No, I'm pretty sure they can't hear me. Silence just gets old quick."

Before the alien had a chance to respond -- although Rodney had no idea how it could respond -- they heard the Stargate come alive behind them.

Everyone turned, even though they couldn't see the gate over the grass.

"You guys expecting anybody?" Sheppard asked.

*

Once John was satisfied that McKay and the others were okay, the first thing that occurred to him was that chances were good Lorne had called for back-up after the crash. But if the jumper had been shot out of the sky, any others that came through would either suffer the same fate, or have to use lethal force to avoid it. He didn't want this to turn into a massacre, and not just because he and his people would be in the middle of it. With the exception of Red, these aliens didn't seem like particularly bad people. Nervous people who had never seen Puddle Jumpers or projectile weapons before, maybe, but not necessarily _bad _people.

So he was expecting it, but not real thrilled about it, when he heard the gate come on.

"You guys expecting anybody?" he asked.

Lorne and Rodney shared a look.

"Yes," Rodney said. "But not quite this soon."

Then Lorne's brow furrowed and he tapped his earpiece. "Yes, we're here. We're still at the jumper, but we've been joined by a couple dozen armed aliens. Colonel Sheppard is here as well."

He paused to listen, nodding at Rodney with a meaningful look in his eyes. Rodney groaned theatrically.

"Rodney," John said impatiently. "What's happening?"

Rodney gestured in the direction of the Stargate, and started to say, "What do you think?" but broke off as Lorne said, "He's fine. How many did you bring with you?"

"How many what?" John hissed. "Who is it?" Just because he was sprawled on the ground between a bunch of aliens who had been holding him prisoner for two days did not negate the fact that he was the ranking officer here, dammit. He wanted to know what the hell was going on.

Lorne was silent again, and then he winced and held up four fingers. "Yes ma'am," he said. "We'll be waiting."

"Only four!" Rodney exploded. "Does everyone in charge of this expedition have a death wish?"

Even the aliens were getting agitated. The alien who had ordered Red to stand down earlier started to dash forward, and Red had to hold it physically back. John jumped as Blue leaned down and grasped his shoulder tightly and shook him excitedly. _What the hell? _

"Major!" John said. The hell with Rodney; Lorne _had_ to answer him. "You mind filling me in?"

Lorne straightened self-consciously. "Yes, sir, sorry. That was Dr. Weir. She's come through the gate with a...small contingent of Marines hoping to open talks with the aliens. She's bringing an alien we have in custody."

"Elizabeth is coming here _now_? Didn't she know about -- wait." John flipped rapidly through each of the startling items in Lorne's short list and got stuck on the last one. "You guys had one of them in custody? How did that happen?"

"It came through the gate when you didn't," Rodney said, surprised. "You didn't know?"

"No, I didn't. I didn't see it go through." Crap. He hadn't known the aliens were trying to get one of their people back. He wasn't sure what he could have done differently if he had known, given the communication issues, but at least the whole situation would have made a little more sense.

He could hear them coming through the grass. He looked up at Blue and motioned that he wanted to get up. Blue took his hand and pulled him effortlessly to his feet; it didn't hang onto him, but let him catch hold of its shoulder to steady himself when he started to topple over.

His entire team was watching them with various levels of surprise or, in Teyla's case, with slightly indulgent amusement. He smirked at her, and told the rest of them, "Yes, I am in fact capable of making friends with the natives sometimes."

Rodney snorted. "Oh, right. You're a regular Jane Goodall."

The tall grass parted to the right of the jumper, and a pair of aliens stepped through. They were followed by Sergeant Coughlin, Lieutenant Billick and Elizabeth, an alien with its arm in a sling, Lieutenants Reed and Djboti, and more aliens. The open space in front of the downed jumper was getting crowded, and some of the alien guard took a few steps back, tucking themselves just inside the first layer of grass where they'd be out of the way but still able to start shooting if they needed too.

At that point Red lost his grip on the alien he was trying to hold back. It dashed forward to meet the injured alien and Elizabeth stepped aside, motioning for Coughlin and the others to do the same.

John realized they were witnessing a reunion of more than the returning-countryman-and-concerned-party sort. The two aliens stood close to each other, both flushing nearly matching shades of soft green; the injured alien raised its free hand and touched its fingertips gently to the fingertips of the other.

"What did you do," John called to Elizabeth. "Reunite a couple of lovers?"

Elizabeth smiled at him, and he could see how relieved she was to see him. He was pretty relieved, too, that so far nobody had shot at her or made any other threatening moves in her direction.

"Not quite," she said, also clearly pleased with herself. "I believe this is one of its parents."

So the offspring of one of the community leaders had been sucked into John's world. Jeez, no wonder Red had been a little hard on him.

"How are you?" she asked, taking in his undoubtedly rough appearance.

"I'm fine," he said. "All things considered."

Coughlin and Reed, who were part of Lorne's usual gate team, had been sending glances over at them to make sure Lorne was all right, too. Lorne nodded briefly to them, and then hesitated.

"Colonel?" he said.

John didn't wait for him to ask. "I'd go now, while everybody's distracted by the family reunion."

Lorne nodded, and moved off to join his team.

John's stomach twisted emptily then, and he had a sudden thought.

"Man, I'm starving," he said, looking surreptitiously at Rodney. "They had no idea what to feed me. All I had to choose from were some suspicious berries and something that looked like a freshly dead local rodent."

Sure enough, Rodney gaped at him. "You haven't eaten since yesterday?" Stepping up to John, completely oblivious of the way half the alien guard flinched and twitched their guns in his direction, he patted down the pockets of his tac vest. He quickly found one of his usual stash of energy bars, pulled it out and handed it to John. "Eat, for god's sake. My blood sugar is plummeting just looking at you."

"Yes. Thank you, Rodney." John tore open the wrapper with his teeth and took a huge bite. He held the bar up so Blue could see it and said through a mouthful, "Human food," and then jerked it back protectively as Blue reached a curious hand for it.

Across the way, the injured alien took a data pad from Elizabeth, which it then handed to its dad. Or mom. John had no idea which, actually.

"What's going on?" he asked Rodney.

"Elizabeth discovered how to communicate with it in writing," he said. "Apparently their written language is very similar to Ancient."

John finished off the energy bar and stuffed the wrapper into his pocket. Food; water; now all he needed was a nap. "Really? How did they manage that? I mean, they haven't even been in most of the Ancient outpost since probably the war with the Wraith. Do you think they --"

"Wait a minute," Rodney stopped him. "How do you know they haven't been in the outpost?"

"I was in it. It was all untouched and dusty. And, you know, there were mummified corpses and stuff."

"You went in? What did you find?" Rodney demanded.

John growled low in his throat. He really should know by now to watch what he said around Rodney when important things like hostage situations were going on. "I found dust. Dead people. Like I said."

"That's all? Did you even look around?"

"Rodney. I was trying to escape from an alien prison. Poking around for cool Ancient gizmos wasn't really a high priority."

"Oh." Rodney deflated slightly. "Right. Sorry."

Elizabeth and the aliens were going back and forth on the data pad. At one point, the injured alien wobbled a bit on its feet, and its parent turned to look in their direction. Blue tapped John on the chest to get his attention, and then handed him off to Rodney. It paused briefly, tilting its head and looking down at John. Then it raised its hand and executed a smooth, brief wave, before turning away.

"Where's that one going?" Rodney asked, pulling John's arm around his shoulders. Ronon and Teyla stepped up to flank them as soon as Blue moved off.

"Probably to check your alien's injury. I think he's one of their doctors. He tried to take care of my leg, anyway. Also tried to help me escape," he added.

Rodney gave him an unreadable look. "Sounds like you were doing a better job of rescuing yourself than we ended up doing."

John felt a flash of the sinking feeling that had run cold through him when he'd first seen the wrecked jumper. "Not really. If I'd been doing a good job of it you guys wouldn't have had to nearly get yourselves killed out here."

Rodney's shoulders lifted crookedly beneath John's arm. "Well, you know. That's part of the whole team thing. Don't leave one of your people behind. And, and all that."

"Yeah." It could have been bad, John knew; hell, it could still go bad. But despite the fact that they were still surrounded by potentially hostile armed aliens, and he was having a really hard time keeping himself upright even with Rodney's support, he was feeling pretty good about the situation now. "I know."

"Hm," Rodney said. "Well -- and." He mumbled something incomprehensible and then said suddenly, more loudly, "Incidentally, how much do you weigh? I did just suffer a concussion yesterday, I'm not sure I should be carrying around this much extra weight." He shifted and attempted to prop John up a little more firmly on his own feet.

John's feet weren't having it, though, so he just let himself droop sideways and went back to hanging on Rodney. He patted Rodney's shoulder lightly and said a little awkwardly, "Hey -- I'm glad you guys are safe, too, McKay."

*

Rodney wasn't sure he'd be able to get used to turning a corner and seeing those aliens standing in the hallway. He pulled up short on his way to the gate room, avoiding colliding with one of the Marines assigned to escort the aliens, and stepped back to let them pass. The aliens gazed around nervously, both fascinated by and a little afraid of all of the humans, the stained glass windows, the lighted panels that opened the doors -- pretty much everything. The Marines herded them patiently onward, acknowledging Rodney with an efficient nod.

He wasn't sure why they disturbed him so much. He'd had no trouble getting used to the Asgard, after all. Maybe it was because the Asgard looked so much like the cutesy pop culture stereotype of aliens, whereas the tree people looked like something Stephen King would have come up with.

He continued toward the gate room, hefting his pack more securely on his shoulder. Elizabeth had finally, finally worked out an agreement with the aliens that would allow a team from Atlantis to explore the Ancient outpost. The Atlanteans still weren't allowed access to the occupied city, though, despite the fact that Atlantis had opened its doors to a few alien scientists and diplomats. Many of the aliens were still having a hard time accepting any kind of relationship with Atlantis, but Rodney could hardly blame them. They had been isolated from other civilizations for almost twenty generations -- which, since they could live up to a thousand years, meant since shortly after their creation near the end of the Ancient-Wraith war.

"Tree people," Rodney muttered to himself as he moved down the hall. "_Tree_ people." He admired the Ancients' amazing range of knowledge and technological advances, but he also thought they must have been incredibly full of themselves. Hybridizing humans and _trees_, for god's sake.

 

The fact that this had been done at an outpost to which they could find no reference in Atlantis' database implied that the hybridization experiments had been done on the sly, either because it would have been considered amoral by the rest of the population, or else because it had been some sort of top secret project. Either way, Rodney hoped this meant he would find some really interesting things at the outpost.

The others were waiting for him in the gate room when he finally trudged in.

"Rodney," Carson said impatiently. "Would you get a move on? We've been ready to go for a good five minutes."

Rodney scowled. "Elizabeth, do you really think it's a good idea to let Beckett wander freely through labs formerly occupied by megalomaniacal geneticists? What if the insanity is contagious?"

Carson rolled his eyes as Elizabeth smiled. "I'm sure he'll be fine, Rodney."

"I'll remind you that you said that the next time I go in for a routine check-up and come out with flowers growing out of my head."

John, Teyla and Ronon were a few feet away with the alien doctor. Supposedly this was going to be a non-combat mission back to the planet for scientific purposes, and the aliens had given every assurance that the human visitors wouldn't be harmed in any way. But, like the aliens being allowed into Atlantis, the human team was required to go unarmed, with an alien escort.

Rodney didn't like it, but he was still going because there was no way in hell he was going to let somebody else have first crack at the outpost. John was going as an observer because he was bored out of his mind from having been on medical leave for the past couple weeks, and because for some reason he liked the aliens and was actually looking forward to going back.

Rodney hadn't known until now that Teyla and Ronon would be going, but he wasn't surprised to see them there. Neither of them had much interest in the scientific side of things, although Teyla was always curious about the Ancients. Their being there had less to do with exploration, though, and more to do with...well, the team thing. And also with making sure John didn't manage to vanish again. The aliens might have decided to be friendly, but knowing Sheppard he'd find some other way to get lost or damaged or otherwise into trouble.

Since his secondary purpose after being dangerous was making sure potential enemies knew he was dangerous, Ronon was watching the alien doctor with low-grade hostility. The alien was completely oblivious. Every indication was that it absolutely loved the humans and was fascinated by anything they did, hostile or otherwise. It was the only alien that had been eager from the start to form an alliance with Atlantis, according to Elizabeth. When fear and isolationism had threatened to kick in it had reminded its leaders that the Atlanteans had treated their hostage far more kindly, and with more scientific and diplomatic sophistication, than its people had treated John. And to those to whom it made a difference, it also deftly emphasized the 'scientific sophistication' point. Elizabeth credited its deft and careful handling of its people for the successful outcome of the negotiations, actually.

John had mentioned at one point that he'd trusted the alien doctor because it reminded him a little of Carson. Rodney figured John had been hallucinating from dehydration and fever, because he certainly didn't see any parallel.

Rodney joined them, setting his heavy pack full of expensive and irreplaceable equipment gently on the floor.

"What are they talking about?" he asked Teyla, nodding at John and the alien.

"I believe Colonel Sheppard is attempting to explain football to it," she said.

Rodney shook his head. "Why am I not surprised?"

John had a PDA loaded with a basic translation program just like the rest of them had, to allow them to communicate via writing with the aliens, but it was stuffed, neglected, into a pocket of his tac vest. Instead, he was punctuating his one-sided verbal conversation with the ungraceful primitive sign language he and the alien had come up with.

"-- like this, this, this spiritual bond between the quarterback -- the guy who throws? -- and the receiver -- the guy who - look, never mind, I have a recording, and a tv -- a box, with pictures, you know, pictures? I'll just show you sometime."

"You know," Rodney said. "It's no wonder we have so much trouble making friends in the Pegasus galaxy, when the first thing they find out about us involves a barbaric American sport."

John raised an eyebrow at him. "Oh what, you think it'd make a difference if we introduced them to hockey first?"

"No," Rodney said with exaggerated patience. "I was thinking more along the lines of introducing them to, I don't know, Earth's great works of art, maybe? Or literature? Or, hm, how about our impressive body of scientific achievement?"

John pff'd and waved him off. "You're just jealous because it likes me better than it likes you."

"It doesn't like you, it thinks you're funny-looking." Apparently it had told Elizabeth that one of the reasons it had believed John was not a danger to its people was because it couldn't believe that a creature capable of doing such varied and amusing things with its facial expression was something to fear. When Sheppard heard this he'd just grinned in an annoyingly self-satisfied way and said, "That's called cross-cultural charm, people."

"Ready to go, Colonel?" Elizabeth said.

"Whenever you are." John motioned to the Stargate and the alien nodded and preceded them through.

Rodney wrestled his pack back off the ground and onto his back, pausing to watch Elizabeth and Carson step through after the alien.

"Is anyone else bothered by the fact that we're required to make these trips unarmed?"

Ronon looked smug. "_You_ might be unarmed."

"Yes, okay, but twenty-three hidden knives of various sizes aren't going to be much use against those weapons."

"Relax, McKay," Sheppard said. "That's part of the reason we're doing this as an exchange. They send some of their people here, while we send some of our people there, so nobody has to worry about anybody shooting at each other or taking hostages. Again."

John started forward, still limping noticeably. He was off crutches, but probably only because he hated them and would rather hobble around in pain than use them. He always ended up trying to move too fast, and would inevitably get tangled up in the crutches and fall on his face. Rodney knew that Carson would prefer John just stay off his feet longer, but had decided to let him go on this mission since it would not, presumably, involve any kind of danger. Hah. With their luck?

"Yes, well, what if the people they sent are criminals? Or diseased? Or something else that makes them expendable?"

"Are we going to have to listen to this the whole time we're there?" John glared.

"Yes," Rodney said, and then admitted, "Or at least until I find a ZPM or something else really, really cool." He stepped through the gate.

*

**Author's Note:**

> Resources other than SGA episodes and DVD commentaries used for information or ideas in this story: "The Ancestor's Tale: A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of Evolution" by Richard Dawkins; the "X-Men" movies; the [Keyless Lock Store](http://www.nokey.com/elstrikandma.html); and [The Physics Classroom](http://www.physicsclassroom.com/).


End file.
